“The denial of merit is a form of social injustice that can hurt not only the individual directly concerned but ultimately the entire society. The motive for the original denial may be tribal discrimination, but it may also come from sexism, from political, religious, or some other partisan consideration, or from corruption and bribery. [However] whenever merit is set aside by prejudice of whatever origin, individual citizens as well as the nation itself are victimized. – Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (1983).
When President Muhammadu Buhari started making his political appointments upon assumption of office on May 29, 2015, many astute observers noted that this president would make it extremely difficult for his supporters to defend many of his actions against those who would want to see a hidden religious or ethnic agenda to his choices. It should obviously not be strange to the president that many Nigerians have voiced their fears that after 33 years since he first assumed leadership of this nation as military Head of State (1983–85) he is still stuck in his old ways of doing things. If I dismissed these claims in the past with a wave of the hand, I doubt that in the present condition I can continue to cling stubbornly to that position. A president who spoke at a forum in London in February 2015 and called himself “a converted democrat” seems to be proving his critics right that he has not changed, and that he doesn’t want to change. If not, how can we explain the pattern of political appointments that he has so far made in the recent and not too recent times?
Recently, President Buhari appointed Ahmed Ja’afaru as the new Comptroller General of the Nigeria Prison Service (NPS). He appointed Mohammed Babandele as the new Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). He also appointed Muhammadu Gana as Comptroller General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). Let us not forget that he had earlier appointed Retired Colonel Hameed Ali as Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). As if this was not bad enough, the Federal Executive Council, under Buhari’s watch, approved the appointment of six new chief executives into the six information-related parastatals under the Ministry of Information and Culture: Yakubu Mohammed as Director General of Nigeria Television Authority (NTA); Dr Garba Abari as Director General of National Orientation Agency (NOA); Mansur Liman as Director General of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN); Ishaq Modibbo Kawu as Director General of Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC); Bayo Onanuga as Director General of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and Osita Okechukwu as Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON).
These six positions offered President Buhari a good template to assign one slot to each of the six geopolitical zones of the country, but he rather chose to zone four of the six positions to the North? In a country where the President, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, and heads of major departments of government bureaucracy (NCC, EFCC, DSS, INEC, etc) are all from northern Nigeria, is it not politically expedient that other zones of the country should also be equitably represented in government? Apart from a few exceptions, all of the president’s official and domestic assistants are from the North. Does it mean that President Buhari does not know competent Nigerians from the South-South or the South East or the South West?
Before some Nigerians start rehearsing the arguments about merit and competence, may I quickly remind them that hundreds of thousands of competent, versatile and morally upright Nigerians also exist in other parts of Nigeria, not only in northern Nigeria, and they too deserve to the factored into the equation of political appointments. The present lop-sidedness in the pattern of appointments, which clearly excludes and marginalizes the three Southern regions (SS, SE, SW) of the country, will only serve to generate a lot of ill feeling, resentment and animosity among many Nigerians.
This will then feed into the rumour being peddled around by some Nigerians that President Buhari is gradually implementing a carefully orchestrated strategic plan to Islamize Nigeria? Or is it not an open secret today that some Nigerians strongly believe that the recent herdsmen/farmers skirmishes in some parts of the South East and the South West are part of the grand plot to Islamize Nigeria using the armed herdsmen to subjugate and conquer supposedly Christian territories? Personally, I believe that all these are baseless rumours and propaganda put together by people who want to sow confusion, hatred and division in the land, but when our president uses his political appointments (and sometimes stoic silence when he should speak) to justify and reinforce these perceptions, what do you expect the ordinary Nigerian who is already buying into those suspicious theories to think?
Although I am not one of those whom Professor Pius Adesanmi dubs, “the Buhari-can-do-no-wrong-fundamentalist-supporters,” I certainly have my profound respects for the man, because I believe he means well for this country. But he must also guard against certain excesses, which pit him against Nigerians either as a “religious bigot” or an “ethnic chauvinist.” These were some of the alleged crimes upon which many Nigerians vehemently opposed his second coming. He thus has a moral duty to prove the bigots wrong, by not falling into the trap they have set for him.
In his lecture at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, in February 2015, shortly before his election as president, Buhari tried to disabuse the minds of his listeners to the allegations of bigotry, fanaticism and dictatorial leadership that have been levelled upon him. After accepting responsibility for past mistakes, he then made a commitment: “I cannot change the past. But I can change the present and the future. So before you is a former military ruler and a converted democrat who is ready to operate under democratic norms and is subjecting himself to the rigours of democratic elections for the fourth time.”
Before this time, after he emerged as the presidential candidate of the APC for the 2015 general election in December 2014, Buhari delivered an acceptance speech in which he made five pledges: “I make these five pledges regarding the government if we are elected.” In the first pledge he said, “We will govern Nigeria honestly, in accordance with the constitution.” In the third pledge he said, “We will tolerate no religious, regional, ethnic or gender bias in our government… Whether you are a Christian from Bayelsa State or a Muslim from Katsina State, you are first and foremost a Nigerian in my eyes. I shall treat you equally as my people, my national family, my brothers and sisters.”
In his acceptance speech of April 1, 2015, after he was declared winner of the presidential election by INEC, President Buhari pledged to govern Nigeria under the principles of justice, equity, and fairness: “There shall be no bias against or favouritism for any Nigerian based on ethnicity, religion, region, gender or social status… You are all my people and I shall treat everyone of you as my own.” In his inaugural speech of May 29, 2015 after he was sworn in as president of Nigeria, President Buhari famously declared: “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.” With the lopsided pattern of his political appointments as of today, who would believe that President Buhari does not belong to some people? Where is the equity in the political appointments of a president who claims he is for everybody?
I am not a politician, but I know for sure that this is never the best way to run a nation. Nigeria belongs to all of us, and we all have a right to feel a sense of belonging in the way our country is governed. Even a system of meritocracy that deliberately excludes some other competent people cannot stand the test of equity and fairness. Political psychology teaches that when people perceive consistently over time that they have been excluded from or denied their right to political participation in governance, they soon adopt one of two attitudes of psychological schism: they either fight back or simply walk way. Either of the two options is bad enough for any government. The people make government and they own government. Once a government loses the trust of the people, it loses everything!
For this reason, those who are close to President Buhari have a moral and civic duty to advise him properly and to help him understand that he is using his political appointments to polarise this country instead of uniting it. He should not allow this political misstep to erode the groundswell of goodwill he still presently enjoys from the vast majority of Nigerians. If he fritters away this goodwill and loses the trust of Nigerians, it will be a poster-sign of the deciding dice of 2019.
