ANNIVERSARY NOTES: 2 years after, how Buhari’s Nigeria stinks under rule of nepotism

Today, May 29, makes it two years since President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s one-time military head of state, was inaugurated to rule the country for the second time, but this time as a democratically elected President.

From Buhari’s inaugural speech of May 29, 2015, Nigerians were intrigued, excited and hopeful with his “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” statement. But two years down the line, Buhari has shown, according to political analysts, that he not only belongs to ‘nepotism’ but a champion of it, at least in ‘African history’.

According to Wikipedia, forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, and embezzlement.

Nepotism, a term which originated with the assignment of close relatives to important positions by Catholic popes and bishops, is based on favouritism granted to relatives in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, religion and other activities.

Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) had criss-crossed the length and breadth of Nigeria with their mantra of change, winning in the process the hearts of numerous citizens who, against all odds, queued behind Buhari’s candidature, during the 2015 presidential election, to ensure that the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan was sacked for a supposed ‘messiah’ with a magic wand to fix the many wrongs of the country, of which corruption is the chief.
Two years after Nigerians made that choice, Buhari, whose government is arguably waging a war against graft, has been accused by many, of overseeing a country with strong stinks of nepotism that has become an issue of concern to many analysts.

A former Joint House Leader of the defunct Peoples Redemption Party and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as a member of the Defence Committee in the Second Republic, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, from Kano State, in a not-too-long ago interview, detailed how Buhari’s government stinks in nepotism.
In his claims, which President Buhari is yet to deny, Mohammed noted the following appointments to prove how nepotic Buhari’s government is: Abba Kyari, the foster child of his nephew, Mamman Daura, appointed Chief of Staff to the President, Daura’s son, appointed Personal Assistant to the President, Lawal Abdullahi Kazaure, Daura’s son-in-law, the State Chief of Protocol, Mohammed Lawal Abubakar, the husband of his elder sister’s granddaughter, Aide de Camp to the President.

There are also Sabiu ‘Tunde’ Yusuf, his sister’s grandson, appointed as a Personal Assistant to the President, Aisha Abubakar, the daughter of the younger sister of Daura’s wife, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment.

Also notable was the appointment of Amina Zakari, as the acting Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman after the commission’s former chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega left.
Zakari, who it was learnt President Buhari had wanted to make a substantive INEC chairman but later had to drop the idea following massive criticism, is said to be Buhari’s niece, the daughter of his elder sister.

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Mohammed had alleged that President Jonathan, while re-organizing INEC to usher in the Jega administration, had reached out to Buhari and asked him to nominate somebody from the North-West for the position of a national commissioner.
He claimed that of all the people in the North-West, Buhari decided to nominate his own Zakari, who till date, remains INEC national commissioner representing the entire seven states in the North-West.

He also revealed that the immediate younger brother to Amina Zakari is currently the Minister for Water Resources representing Jigawa State in Buhari’s government.
According to Mohammed, Buhari’s present administration is “shamelessly the worst form of nepotism in the history of Africa”.

Examples also cited by critics as indicators of the putrid essence of nepotism under Buhari’s government is the alleged lopsided appointments into the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigerian Prison Service through scandalous backdoor recruitments which favoured only the ‘special’ and privileged ones.

Despite the hues and cries of Nigerians against those injustices, no one was reprimanded, sanctioned or any cogent step taken to correct the alleged anomalies.
The most recent one is the scandalous lop-sidedness in the composition of the new officers recruited into the DSS, where of the 479 officers commissioned by the agency, 165 are from the North-west, North-East 100, North-central 66, South-West 57, South-East 44 and South-South 42.
Katsina, Buhari and DSS DG Daura’s home state, alone had 51 of its indigenes as commissioned officers.

This is despite the stipulation of Section 14, subsection 3 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria which states, that “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such manner to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or sectional groups in that government or any of its agencies”.

Efforts by the Presidency to justify its action by claiming that the controversial recruitment was not unusual, as it was meant to balance past lop-sidedness, have been called bunkum by many Nigerians who described such justification as one of the weakest ways to defend apparent nepotism in government.

Many political analysts have also accused Buhari of apparently breaching with impunity the stipulation of Section 14, subsection 3 of the 1999 Constitution in his appointments.
They argued that his appointments have shown that an ethnic nationality is being favoured over the others.

Another example was how Buhari, in his first set of appointments, brought back a retired officer to head the Department of State Services; a former army officer Nigeria Customs Service boss, his relative as Chief of Staff, and flooded the other security and law enforcement agencies in favour of the region he came from, the North.
Not only that, there have also been claims that people he appointed in those positions were not just northerners, but those who shared the same Islamic faith with him.
Buhari, despite appropriating the portfolio of the Ministry of Petroleum to himself also appointed his relative and Chief of Staff, Kyari, a member of the board of directors of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Another disturbing incident of favouritism was also, how in spite of public opinion, a former Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, a southern Christian, was replaced with a northern Muslim, an Assistant Inspector-General (AIG). And in order to ensure he was head and most senior officer in the force, 21 DIGs and AIGs who were senior to him, had to be removed.

While the president has the constitutional power to staff the executive branch of the government, the discharge of this responsibility without recourse to the federal character principle has been a source of tension within the polity.

The effect of this, some argue, has resulted in different agitations in the country, especially among the people of South-East and South-South geo-political zones leading to heightened demand for restructuring of the country among the entire southern part of the country.
While nobody is sure of what Buhari wI’ll do to address the perceived nepotism in his government in view of the coming 2019 general elections, it may not be wrong to say that when his first two years in office as a democratically elected president will be talked about in times to come, the issue of nepotism as a form of corruption will dominate the discourse.

 

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