By Douglas Anele

The assertion that President Buhari’s appointments were based strictly on merit and competence and that any lopsidedness would be rectified later is unconvincing and unacceptable, considering the overarching need to forge a cohesive political union out of the various geopolitical zones in the country.

Buhari

Aside from the fact that, collectively, the appointees are mostly ageing retired civil servants and military personnel some of whom are probably square pegs in round holes, the questions those parading the bunkum of exclude-the-South-East-and-women-now-and-compensate-them-later should answer are – what criteria of merit and competence could possibly justify exclusion of women and eminently qualified and competent Nigerians from the South-East in the appointments Buhari has made thus far?

What is the guarantee that a President with a questionable history of favouritism for the North would suddenly change overnight and start treating every part of Nigeria as his constituency? Besides, merit and competence are inseparable: they are universal qualities often measured according to academic and professional qualifications, cognate experience and, above all, verifiable track record of previous performance either in the same position or in a post similar to the one the person is being considered for presently. I have not seen solid evidence demonstrating that all the appointees without exception are the best for the various posts.

Therefore, to invoke “merit” and “competence” every time the issue of unfairness to women and Ndigbo by Buhari is raised, as if mere repetition of those words would undo the damage already done is, to put it mildly, completely ridiculous. One could as well argue that domination of top echelons of government by Afrikaners in apartheid South Africa was legitimate because the officials were selected based on “merit” and “competence.”

Now, how many Nigerians have adequate information about the appointees? Where are the imaginative journalists who should have taken up the claim that the appointees were chosen on merit by investigating thoroughly their past records? Unfortunately, most of our journalists these days are uninterested in investigative research, because journalism is gradually being dominated by agabta ekee journalists who merely report the news without follow-up research that could reveal hidden information detrimental to the claims of officialdom or the “high and mighty” in society.

To claim that President Buhari would correct the imbalance he deliberately created is like arguing that if the initial apples one selected from a container of fruits were red, the remaining would be mostly green to compensate for the initial red apples, which is mere wishful thinking. That said, I would be surprised if President Buhari appoints someone from the South-East as attorney-general and minister of justice, minister of defence, minister of finance, minister of works or of the federal capital territory. These and other powerful ministerial positions would be given to Northerners and one or two left for the Yoruba to pacify the Tinubu group in APC. Old habits, like old soldiers, die hard; I simply cannot see how Buhari, who was indifferent to the collective interests of Ndigbo when he was military ruler and PTF chairman, would behave differently now that he is a septuagenarian. As one of my friends proclaimed, President Buhari is running a version of democracy redefined by people like Ango Abdullahi and Junaid Mohammed as “government of Northerners, by Northerners and for Northerners.”

Since Buhari is acting as if he can govern effectively without the South-East, I suggest that Ndigbo from now on should reject any appointment from his government to register in clear terms their displeasure with his indifference to the yearnings and aspirations of our people, especially if such positions are of the lowly kind meant to humiliate Ndigbo. Equitable distribution of important positions among federating units in a federation matters a lot: it strengthens the union, gives people a sense of belonging and makes them believe that they are relevant in the scheme of things.

At any rate, instead of hankering after federal appointments, prominent Igbo sons and daughters, including those in the Diaspora, should come together, formulate a robust blueprint for massive accelerated development of Igboland and work towards its practical realisation. In my opinion, any Igbo who expects fairness from the current APC federal government is living in a cloud cuckoo land.

President Buhari has made it clear several times that he is intent on killing corruption before it kills Nigeria. No right thinking Nigerian can fault the President on that. Indeed, many Nigerians believe that although the President has not added anything new to the fight against corruption, many public officials are afraid to engage in graft based on his reputation of having zero-tolerance for corruption. While commending the President for having a reputation that makes public servants avoid corruption, it is important to point out that mere reputation or the so-called “body language” is not enough. Moreover, he needs to reappraise his strategy for tackling corruption in the light of the following observations.

President Buhari’s position on the matter is weakened by the fact that he is not as squeaky clean as some of his supporters proclaim. But no human being is perfect, and a leader does not need to be a saint to prosecute a successful anti-corruption campaign. What he requires most are discipline, clear vision, creative imagination and determination to be fair, firm and just all the time. Second, well-known politicians that helped him win the presidential election are dubious characters with stinking reputations for corruption.

The question now is – would the President be willing to move against his benefactors? Third, his ill-advised decision to restrict his anti-corruption crusade only to the administration of former President Jonathan creates the impression that he is deliberately targeting the latter and ignoring elephantine corruption that occurred before 2010 because of the “sacred cows” involved. Supporters of the President argue that, because of the time factor involved, it is more convenient for him to concentrate his crusade against corruption on his immediate predecessor’s administration.

However, given the crippling effects of decades-old graft on every aspect of our national life, it is wrong for a leviathan who genuinely wants to eradicate corruption to arbitrarily limit the extent he can go, thereby inadvertently allowing some of the most hideously corrupt public officials, including former military dictators, to escape justice. Meanwhile, notice, for instance, how former President Olusegun Obasanjo who lampooned Jonathan on several occasions and publicly dramatised his resignation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to spite him further, has cunningly transformed into a sort of errand boy for President Buhari probably to discourage the latter from probing his government.

Now, if there is any well-corroborated case of corruption against Jonathan or any member of his government, the appropriate agencies of government should take up the matter and deal with it expeditiously. But it would be a serious mistake if the war against corruption targets only members of the former ruling party, critics of federal government or members of the APC who are unwilling to follow sheepishly the dictates of the party.

Some of the avoidable errors in the current effort to reduce corruption to a manageable level are evident in the confrontation between the Code of Conduct Bureau and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki. Before going into that, I must point out the fallacy of equivocation committed by those who argue that the President did the right thing by focusing his anti-corruption searchlight on Jonathan’s government only simply because it would be a distraction for him to go beyond 2010 due to time constraints.