Founder of Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), Fredrick Fasheun has blamed the ongoing clamour for the disintegration of the country on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.
The OPC founder said the reason might not be unconnected with the way Buhari was showing preference for the northern part of the country over other regions.
Fasheun, who made this claim at a press conference in Lagos on Tuesday, noted that Buhari administration’s bias in favor of the North had further created divisions in Nigeria.
He said if the president did not retrace his steps, his action may lead to the nation’s breakp.
“When he first took power in 2015 and began his initial appointments, President Muhammadu Buhari demonstrated unbelievable insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity, unity and Constitution by unfolding a list of appointees clearly dominated and monopolized by his Northern kinsmen to the alienation and disadvantage of other regions, especially the South-East,” the OPC leader said.
He observed that of the six security service chiefs President Buhari has appointed, the North produced four appointees, while the South produced two. He especially noted that the South-East was jettisoned.
“By July 2016, President Buhari had appointed 47 southerners and 75 northerners into various non-ministerial public offices. Again, the South-East brought up the rear with 12 appointees, where Buhari’s North-West had the largest chunk with 34 of political office holders,” Fasheun observed.
Speaking further, the elder statesman also identified appointments into the nation’s security institutions as examples of President Buhari’s naked bias. In these institutions, Mr. Faseun said, the North holds the leadership positions of the National Security Adviser, Inspector-General of Police, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Chief of Defence Intelligence, Director-General, State Security Services and Comptroller-General, Nigerian Customs Service. Other positions locked down by the North, he pointed out, are the Comptroller-General, Nigerian Immigration Service and the Chairmanship of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
“Out of the 15 new directors, 10 (67 percent) come from the mostly Hausa-Fulani North, three are Yoruba, two come from the South-South and none from the South-East. President Buhari must urgently review these appointments to reflect Federal Character, failing which the Senate should bar the appointees from resuming in office,” he said.
“By making these Northern-dominated appointments, President Buhari has contradicted the letter and spirit of the Constitution he swore to uphold, specifically the Federal Character principle in Section 14(3). The President must realize that favoring the North with his lopsided appointments is an act of impunity, and it has sparked the raging agitations for disintegration, ethnic separatism and restructuring.
“Some of his declarations, perhaps made innocently, have inadvertently only succeeded in dividing the nation, paving the way for unbelievers to keep agitating for the irreducible minimums like restructuring, true federalism and devolution of powers,” Fasehun noted.
