On President Buhari’s Appointments and the Structure of Nigeria -By Cheta Nwanze

I just read an Op-Ed in Premium Times regarding the President Buhari’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, Sir Ahmadu Bello. As a matter of fact, three years later, in 1957, Joe Tarka and David Lot led the United Middle Belt Congress (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 these were 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 people 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 any time 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.

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.
On a zone by zone basis, based on the current six geopolitical zones, the North-West and then the North-East have by far enjoyed the bulk of appointments made by this Federal Government, with the North-West clocking almost three times as many positions as the South-East, and the North-East landing more than twice the number for the South-East. The North-West has more than twice the number of appointments 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 percent of the appointments. The F rating starts at 39 percent for comparison.

I have said so many times earlier that, on a personal note, I don’t care much for 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 days’ 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.

Follow Cheta Nwanze on Twitter @Chxta