|
Much Ado about 'Northernisation'
By Olusegun Adeniyi
IT is becoming increasingly fashionable these days for some groups and individuals to falsely accuse President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua of pursuing a "Northernisation" agenda through the appointment of mostly Northerners to vacant positions in the federal public service.
It started as a whispering campaign. Gradually, however, its purveyors are becoming more emboldened, speaking with magisterial, even oracular authority. But nothing can be farther from the truth. Nothing can be more unfair. And nothing can be less useful in our quest for a fair, just and united society, a quest to which President Yar'Adua is passionately committed.
Those propagating the Northernisation theory often cite as "evidence", the alleged preponderance of Northerners in the appointments made by President Yar'Adua in the last one year. The impression being created by this allegation is that the President is a parochial person who cannot see beyond his section of the country in terms of political appointments.
This allegation has no basis in fact. However, since the assertion is gaining increasing currency and could unfortunately become accepted as truth by an unwary public, it is important to set the record straight.
Here are the indisputable facts of the matter: A verifiable list of all the personal aides, special advisers and other appointees to the Yar'Adua Presidency reveals that the North is actually behind the South. While the President retained about 80 percent of the personnel from the Obasanjo era, even a cursory glance at the states of origin of the few he himself appointed reveals that majority are actually from the South. Records kept by the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President show that out of the 57 political appointees to Presidency, 32 come from the South and only 25 from the North. A breakdown of Presidential Aides further reveals that of the 19 Senior Special Assistants, 11 are from the South and eight from the North while of the 23 Special assistants, 14 are from the South and nine from the North. There are only four personal assistants and of these, three are from the south with only one from the North.
The substantive appointments from the South include: Ms. Ama Pepple who last week replaced Engr. Ebele Okeke as Head of Service of the Federation; Dr. Gbolade Osinowo, initially retained as Senior Special Assistant on Political Affairs but now the acting Chief of Staff to the President; Dr Emmanuel Egbogah, Special Adviser on Petroleum; Dr. Bolanle Babalakin, Honourary Adviser on Legal Matters; Chief Mike Oghiadomhe, Deputy Chief of Staff-VP; Dr. Magnus Kpakol, National Coordinator on NAPEP; Amb. Daniel Hart, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs; Mr. Mathew Aikhionbare, Senior Special Assistant to the President (Administration) ; Deaconess J.O. Ayo, Senior Special Assistant on Economic Affairs; and Princess Gloria Nweka, Senior Special Assistant on Presidential Matters.
Others are Dr. Ifeoma Amobi, Senior Special Assistant on National Development Matters; Mr. Oronto Douglas, Senior Special Assistant on Research and Documentation; Mr. Nze Akachukwu Sullivan Nwakpo, Special Assistant on Special Duties; Mr. Femi Ajayi, Special Assistant on Multilateral Cooperation; Mrs. Moremi Soyinka-Onilaja, Special Assistant on Youth Programme Monitoring; Blessing Omonibeke, Special Assistant on Domestic Matters; Mr. Azibanairo Jonathan, Special Assistant on Special Duties; Dr. Fiberesima Peter and Dr. E. O. Austin Amadi, both Personal Physicians at the Presidency; Mr. Braeyi Collins Ekiye, Principal Private Secretary to the VP and Mr. Ima Niboro; Senior Special Assistant on Media to the VP.
Also among the presidential aides from the South are Mr. Ken Saro Wiwa (Jnr.), Special Assistant to the President on International Affairs; Bolaji Adebiyi, Special Assistant on Political Affairs and Dr. Cairo Ojougbo, Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters. Other Special Assistants include Mrs. Oluwatoyin Adetunji, Mr. Daziba Patrick Obah, Mr. Peter Ohemu, Mrs. Dikimiemi Collins Mily, Princess Aramide Gbadamosi, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Njoku and Mrs. Esther Mary Obi.
Interestingly, out of the 25 "Northern" appointees to the Yar'Adua Presidency, three are actually Yoruba men. These are Dr. Tunji Olagunju, Special Adviser on NEPAD (Kwara); Engineer Joseph Makoju, Honourary Special Adviser on Power (Kogi) and this reporter, Olusegun Adeniyi, Special Adviser on Communications (Kwara). Other 'Northerners' are: Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, Secretary to the Government of the Federation; Major-General Sarki Mukhtar, National Security Adviser; Dr. Tanimu Yakubu Kurfi, Chief Economic Adviser; Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, Hon. Adviser on Energy; and Senator Mohammed Abba Aji, Special Adviser on National Assembly Affairs.
The remaining 'Northerners' in the Presidency include Mr. Ad'Obe Obe, Senior Special Assistant on SERVICOM; Capt Shehu Iyal, Senior Special Assistant on Aviation; Alhaji Inuwa Baba, Senior Special Assistant for Special Duties; Dr. Salisu Banye, Chief Personal Physician to the President; Dr. Abdularasheed Yusuf, Personal Physician in the Presidency and Hajia Amina Ibrahim, Senior Special Assistant on Millennium Development Goals.
Others are: Dr Akilu Indabawa, Senior Special Assistant, Political; Hamza Ndada, Special Assistant, Special Duties; Alhaji Yakubu Aliyu, Special Assistant on Policy; Mrs. Asma'u Abdulkadir, First Lady's office; Hajia Binta Aliyu, Domestic Affiars; Isa Charanchi, Protocol; Alhaji L.A. Bakori, Secretariat Duties and Mr. A.A Gulak, SpecialAssistant, Legal and Constitutional Matters, Yakubu
Musa, Special Assistant on Media; Baba Kachalla, Special Assistant on SMEDAN and Ibrahim Zailani, Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters.
As for Ministerial appointments, they are based on the constitutional provision of at least one per state so there is no issue there except for the patently sordid debate about which ministry is "juicy" or "lucrative" and which one is not.
Those who unfairly accuse the President of a Northernisation agenda should also note that President Yar'Adua retained Mr. Stephen Orosanye, a Southerner from Edo State as Permanent Secretary, State House; retained Mr. Matt Aikhionbare (another Edo man) and made him his Personal Secretary and appointed Colonel M. D. Onayiveta from Delta State as his Aide-de-Camp. In my own case, as a fellow "Northerner”, let's just accept that President Yar'Adua, like his predecessor, also appointed his kinsman as spokesman!
A mischievous aspect of the current charge of 'northernisation' against President Yar'Adua, is that in order to unjustifiably convict the President in the court of public opinion, his accusers have deliberately and conveniently reduced Nigeria to four rather than six geo-political zones. The new zonal arrangement, according to them, is: South-West, South-East, South-South and the NORTH! Against the backdrop of the fact that there are 19 states in the North as against 17 in the South, this kind of convenient geo-political re-mapping is not only tendentious; it is also patently unfair and unjust.
For those who wrongly accuse the President of favouring the North unduly, it was just fine when former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba man from the South-West appointed people from the South-south or South-east. For doing that, the former President is now acclaimed, albeit belatedly, as a "bridge-builder”, "apostle of meritocracy and federal character" and "a detribalized Nigerian". But if Yar'Adua, a North-Westerner, in keeping with the same federal character principle enshrined in our Constitution which his predecessor applied, appoints persons from the North-Central Zone or North-East to any public office, he is immediately accused of being a tribalist and favouring his "kinsmen".
I must state here that the former President was indeed broad-minded in terms of his appointments and nobody can take away the fact that he has always been, and remains, a pan-Nigerian statesman. But the point remains that there has been no departure from that standard. If anything, appointments under the current dispensation are actually tilted more in favour of the South than the North and this can be easily verified.
Indeed, after a thorough re-examination of the facts and figures, one is sadly drawn to the conclusion that in rushing to crucify President Yar'Adua as a tribalist, his critics have merely taken up the old, worn and over-flogged accusation made against his Northern predecessors, without pausing to check whether, in the present case, his actions really warrant the charge.
I believe that it will be worthwhile at this point to critically re-examine the three recent appointments that appear to have given rise to the resurgence of claims that President Yar'Adua is pursuing a Northernisation agenda. These are those of the NTA Director General, Comptroller- General of the Nigerian Customs Service and the EFCC Chairman .
Let's take the first. There are nine parastatals under the Ministry of Information and Communication and the President has replaced only two Heads of these parastatals by appointing Mrs. Oluremi Oyo as Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria and Dr. Usman Magawata as Director-General of NTA. In making his case for Magawata, the Minister, Mr. John Odey, took a holistic picture of the Ministry where six of the nine heads are currently Southerners and made a recommendation to the President on the need for geo-political balancing. On EFCC, while the current chairman is from the North-Central Zone, many of President Yar'Adua's accusers don't seem to remember that her ICPC counterpart is from the South-West.
Okay, so the new Customs boss like the much talked-about acting Group Managing Director of NNPC (a position that will soon be reformed and stripped of all its "attractions" ) is also from the North. But how do we situate other previous appointments? If President Yar'Adua was really a rabid tribalist intent on re-imposing a 'Northern hegemony' over the rest of the country as some would have us believe, then what would be the logic of his appointing a Southerner as Inspector-General of Police and retaining others as heads of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, SMEDAN, Bureau of Public Enterprise, Bureau of Public Procurement, Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria, etc?
This intervention became even more necessary after what recently transpired following the inauguration of the Police Reforms Committee. With prominent people making a strong public condemnation of the composition based on the allegation that the South-west was not represented in the committee, I made calls to point the attention of some Yoruba leaders to the fact that two of the members are actually from the zone. But I refrained from making any public statement on the issue because I considered it unhelpful.
A few weeks later, however, this same accusation came up at a public function where I was present and when I drew the attention of the people to the membership of Mr. Waheed O. Kashim (Lagos) and Mrs. Cecilia Bisi Ugowe (Ogun) on the committee, they expressed surprise. Such unfounded accusations now adorn the covers of widely-circulated magazines and newspapers as well as internet sites. As much as I detest this kind of unproductive debate, the danger in allowing these falsehoods to go unchallenged is that a totally wrong and demeaning image will be foisted on a President whose actions are never compromised by the pettiness and myopia of ethnic or sectional interests.
It is even more tragic that at a time the world is looking beyond such primordial sentiments like ethnicity, race and colour; when young men and women in America are making a strong case that we all are one people bound by one common destiny, some people in our country are bent on manufacturing, manipulating and magnifying our differences for parochial gains. That has always been the tactics of choice for politicians who profit from promoting ancient and gradually vanishing differences amongst us in their eternal pursuit of selfish interests, while holding us back from our common heritage and shared destiny. My colleagues in the media must resist being converted into pawns in this latest version of an old game.
To be sure, one should not pretend that ethnicity is not a major factor in our socio-political development as a nation. It is. Or that it is necessarily a negative factor. It is not. But we must distinguish between ethnicity which promotes harmony in diversity and ethnocentrism which hinders growth and development. It was the late Ken Saro Wiwa who made a clear distinction between the two in his lecture titled 'Ethnicity and National Development' at the University of Ibadan in 1989. In his words, "ethnicity is the fact of the ethnic group. It poses no danger to the nation. Ethnocentrism is the danger; it is the misuse of the ethnic group, of ethnic sentiments against other ethnic groups in a sterile competition. "
It is important to underscore the fact that President Yar'Adua is strongly committed to the value of equity in appointments and opportunities in a plural society such as ours. Beyond giving emotional satisfaction and sense of belonging, equity is good for social capital, national cohesion and national development. The President is sold on this, and has reflected that much in his appointments so far. He will, however, not be held hostage by those who maliciously reify sectionalism in furtherance of a selfish agenda. Neither should the rest of us.
*Adeniyi is the Special Adviser on Communications to the President
|
Authors 
Posted by gwobezentashi| 22.06.2008 04:53