By Ikechukwu Amaechi
On Monday, August 7, the Senate confirmed 45 of the 48 ministerial nominees sent to it by President Bola Tinubu. Surprisingly, it deferred the confirmation of three nominees – former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai; a former senator from Taraba, Sani Danladi; and a nominee from Delta State, Stella Okotete – because of undisclosed security concerns.
Tinubu transmitted the names of the 48 nominees in three separate correspondences to the Senate on July 28, August 3 and August 4, the last list containing the names of Mr. Festus Keyamo, former Minister of State for Labour and Employment from Delta State and Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, a replacement for Dr. Maryam Shetty, whose nomination was withdrawn. Many Nigerians are perplexed at the development because nominees ought to have scaled the security hurdle before coming to the Senate. Does it mean that the Department of State Services, DSS, and other security agencies did not do due diligence?
I doubt! So, there must be something the powers-that-be are not telling Nigerians. But whatever that is, I will be pleasantly surprised if the three, particularly El-Rufai, is not cleared. If Tinubu wants him in his cabinet, then in his cabinet El-Rufai will be. After all, the senators have been rewarded handsomely for letting the nominees, including Bello Muhammad from Sokoto State, who got admission into the university with only two credits, off the hook lightly as disclosed by the “Uncommon Senate President” on Monday.
“In order to enable all of us enjoy our
holidays, a token has been sent to our various accounts by the Clerk of the
National Assembly,” Akpabio, grandmaster in the art of procuring loyalty,
enthused before the adjournment motion was moved to the embarrassment of his
colleagues, who knew that he was on hot mic. Apparently, the excitable and high-strung
Senate president was carried away.
When the video started trending
on Wednesday, a colleague of mine and fellow Chevening scholar from Kaduna
State sent me a text message: “This guy (Akpabio) is not fit to lead the
Senate. I was shocked when I heard him live.” My response was straightforward:
“I am shocked that you were shocked that Akpabio said that.” To be fair, what
is happening under Akpabio’s watch has been the norm since 1999. Perhaps, the
only difference is that given his pedigree, he will take the art a notch higher
than his predecessors. The money paid into their accounts to enjoy their
holidays was a back rub from an appreciative presidency for a job well done. As
Senator Shehu Sani noted on Wednesday, “crediting the legislators accounts are
done under mute button, the Uncommon Senate President mistakenly pressed the
alarm”.
Nevertheless, I am knocked for
six that some Nigerians are yet to come to the realisation that whatever we
thought were the shortcomings of the Ahmad Lawan-led ninth Senate, the tenth
Senate will be far worse. Akpabio will not only jump whenever Tinubu wishes, he
will ask how high. But that is a matter for another day. Back to Tinubu’s
48-member cabinet. First, it is too bloated for a country on the edge of
bankruptcy and in dire need of cutting down the cost of governance. But the
second and most important issue which Tinubu’s cabinet has raised is his
contempt for the South-East.
With the highly skewed
nominations, the president simply intensified his war of attrition against a
region whose only crime is that one of their own, Peter Obi, had the guts to
run for the presidency of his country. In assembling his 48-member cabinet,
Tinubu willfully shortchanged the region and violated the Federal Character
principle by refusing to accede them a zonal representation as he did to
others. This shabby, in-your-face treatment for a zone with equal stake like
others in the Nigeria project is condemnable.
The 1999 Constitution stipulates that there must be one minister from each of the 36 states of the federation. Presidents have also used their discretion to add six more ministers, one from each of the six geo-political zones in what is now known as zonal representation to bring the number to 42. Tinubu added 12 more ministers to the list, thus bringing the number to 48. But an analysis of the ministerial spread shows that the South-East is the only region without a zonal representation under Tinubu’s cynical watch.
Ordinarily, the South-East as the only zone with
five states is grossly shortchanged in terms of political representation. In
the Senate, they have only 15 senators while four other zones with six states
each – South-West, South-South, North-East, North-Central – have 18 senators
and North-West with seven states has 21 senators.
Not only that, by virtue of the
inequity in the number of states, all the other five zones are already ahead of
the South-East in the constitutionally mandatory allocation of ministers –
North-West (7), North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-South with six
ministers each while South-East has only five. If fairness and equity were to
be the lightening rod of governance in Nigeria, the South-East is the zone
where the president should use his discretionary power to give extra slot(s).
But anyone who expects Tinubu to do that neither knows the man nor his
politics.
In his distribution of the extra
ministerial slots, he gave additional three ministers each to North-West and
South-West, making it a total of 10 and nine ministers respectively for the zones;
North-East, North-Central and South-South got two extra ministers, a total of
eight for each of the zones. Thus, in the 48-member cabinet, South-East has an
insignificant 10.4 per cent representation. This exclusionary absurdity is
unconscionable. The implication is that rather than rejecting, Tinubu is
doubling down on Buhari’s politics of exclusion playbook as enunciated at the
U.S. Institute of Peace in July 2015.
For those who may have forgotten, here is Buhari’s doctrine. Tasked by Dr. Pauline Baker, the President Emeritus of The Fund for Peace, on inclusive government, Buhari retorted: “I hope you have a copy of the election results. The constituents, for example, gave me 97per cent (of the vote) cannot in all honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me five per cent.” Tinubu is on the same trajectory.
But isn’t that view harebrained, grossly mistaken and
mischievous? Right now, Tinubu’s party, the All Progressives Congress, APC,
holds sway in two of the five South-East states – Imo and Ebonyi. The three
other dominant political parties – Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is in power
in Enugu, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, dominates Anambra politics
and Labour Party calls the shot in Abia. So, APC controls 40 per cent of the
states in the South-East.
Granted, Tinubu did not win any
of the South-East states in the presidential election, but even in the
South-South, without the electoral antics of former Rivers governor, Nyesom
Wike, which gave him the State, he did not win anywhere else in the region.
Labour Party carried the day in Edo, Cross River and Delta states while PDP
took Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa. Even in the South-West, PDP won in Osun State while
Labour took Lagos. So, why is Tinubu singling out the South-East for reprisals?
As if that was not bad enough,
the president ensured that the South-East got what is unarguably the worst
quality of representation since the return of democracy in 1999. He clearly
sidelined the region’s first eleven and went for people who will be beholden to
interests that are adversarial to the region. The only reason why anyone would
appoint Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, Nkeruika Onyejeocha, Uche Nnaji and Doris Uzoka
as ministers from South-East is to rub insult into the injury of under-representation.
Tinubu’s war against South-East cannot be more brazen but he will fail just as
his predecessor failed.
*Amaechi
is a commentator on public issues
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