President Muhammadu Buhari’s latest round of appointments to federal office has drawn a great deal of criticism, especially across the southern half of Nigeria. The immediate cause of the disenchantment is the ethnic origins of the officials he named to the positions at issue.
Of the six, only Ita Solomon Enang, Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters (Senate) comes from the South. The other five, Babachir David Lawal (Secretary to the Government of the Federation), Abba Kyari, (Chief of Staff to the President), Colonel Hammed Ibrahim Ali (Comptroller-General, the Nigerian Customs Service), Kure Martin Abeshi (Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service), and Suleiman A. Kawu, Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters (House of Representatives), come from the North.
Their qualifications are not in dispute.
But in the news media and public discourse, the appointments have been described as “lopsided”, as reflecting insensitivity to the plurality of the Nigerian state, and as having stirred up “outrage across Nigeria.” Some have even gone to the incendiary length to characterising Buhari as “President of Northern Nigeria.”
The Chief of Staff reports directly to the President. His appointment belongs entirely in the President’s discretion. That is how it should be. The Presidency will function much better when President and the Chief of Staff share outlook and vision and have matching chemistry.
The office of Secretary to the Federal Government has a larger purview and answers to a much larger audience. But here also, Nigerian presidents, going back to the Second Republic, have traditionally exercised discretionary power in selecting those whose devotion and loyalty they can more or less take for granted. The same goes for the President’s liaison officers with the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Of the six posts at issue, then, only two – the comptrollers-general for the Customs and Immigration services– fall outside the realm of presidential discretion. Appointment to these posts is subject to confirmation by the Senate.
It is here that the case can perhaps be made that the President should have cast his net much wider in search of suitable appointees, of whom there is no shortage. Surely, it has been asked, if a worthy appointee could not have been found within its own ranks to lead the Customs, instead of recalling a military officer from retirement to lead the agency?
Over the decades, the Customs service has been notorious for setting ridiculously low revenue targets, and then congratulating itself on meeting and exceeding them. Desperate for enhanced revenues to cushion shrinking receipts from oil exports, the government seems to have decided, according to informed sources, that an outsider is better placed to lead the agency to answer to the new challenge.
But it does not follow that the person should come from the North.
Even so, and taking into account the President’s previous appointments, it is too early to write Buhari off as President of only one section of Nigeria. Cumulatively, the appointments constitute only a tiny fraction of those he will be making in due course.
Besides, those judging the appointments in terms of ethnic arithmetic will stand on firmer ground if they weighed them in the overall context of senior public service positions, not piecemeal. The piecemeal approach rests on an unrepresentative sample, and is to that extent flawed. Also, how much power and influence derive from it should be the measure of the office, not crude numbers.
Still, the concerns that have been expressed cannot be ignored. The President has been put on notice that his appointees will be closely scrutinised, and that he will be pressed to ensure that they fully and faithfully reflect the pluralistic makeup of the Nigerian State, especially in terms of ethnicity, religion and gender.
It is healthy that the President has acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns and promised that they will inform future appointments.
