Rejoinder on President Buhari’s appointments
I just read an OpEd in Premium Times regarding the President’s appointments. I recommend you read it too.
In order to drive home his point, the author delves into a bit of history. It is true that Nigeria began with the Northern region and the Southern region. It is also true that the Southern region was split into East and West, this happened in 1954. What the author failed to note though, was that at the same time that the Southern region was split, there were calls for a similar split in the North. These calls were ignored by the British government on the insistence of the Premier of the Northern region, Ahmadu Bello. As a matter of fact, three years later, in 1957, Joe Tarka and David Lot led the UMBC into an alliance with Awo’s Action Group. One of their stated goals was to take the Middle Belt out of the Northern region. This move was sternly resisted by Bello. In 1959, and 1963, Middle Belt agitations led to the Tiv Riots, which were brutally put down by the Nigerian Army. News about all of this was suppressed in the media.
Basically, it served Ahmadu Bello’s purpose, to always present the North as one monolith, which he ruled. This is the major reason why peoples from the various parts of Southern Nigeria have historically perceived the “North” as one. It is a mental block that was decades in the making, and will not go away anytime soon.
Be that as it may, the author of the Premium Times piece is right. There is a North Central, a North East, and a North West, and on that score, those, from the South who complain about the President appointing mainly people from the North are wrong. Or are they?
Exactly a week ago, someone nominated the organisation that I work for to dig up the data regarding the spread of appointments by this government. We duly obliged and the results are interesting to say the least.
Fact is, it cannot be hidden.
On a zone by zone basis, based on the current six geopolitical zones, the North West, then the North East have by far the bulk of appointments made by this FG, with the North West clocking almost three times as many as the South East, and the North East clocking more than twice the South East. The North West has more than twice those of the South West. If we decide to use the 1914–1954 regions as the marker, then we have the old Northern region having a total of 80 appointments as at when this data was compiled, and the old Southern region having 48, or 37.5% of the appointments. The F rating starts at 39% for comparison.
I have said so many times earlier that on a personal note, I don’t give a rat’s posterior as to where people nominated for pubic service come from. However, the truth must be told. Based on Section 14(3) of that document the President swore to abide by, then the distribution of his appointments is lopsided, and wrong. We cannot run from that uncomfortable fact.
What is the solution?
Even if I’m sounding like a scratched CD, the solution is to restructure. We need to go back to that mode of running things which enabled Ahmadu Bello to decide to stay in Kaduna in 1960 rather than move to Lagos. What we have now is an aberration where everyone is looking at Abuja. This is wrong. The only state capitals that are within two day’s walk from Abuja are Jos, Kaduna, Lafia, Lokoja, and Minna. What this means is that Abuja is too far away for the vast majority of Nigerians to make their voices heard. Power MUST move from the centre to the states. That is the surest way to put an end to the persistent cries of marginalisation.
The weight of history is on the APC government, whom I campaigned with, and voted for, to keep their promise, and set us on the path towards a restructuring of the country. No other arrangement is good enough.