By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief & Funmi Olasupo

Dr. Shettima Bukar-Abba is the Acting Chairman of the Federal Character Commission who bears the burden of ensuring that all ethnic groups in the country are fairly represented in federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies.   In this interview, he says that getting MDAs to adhere to the regulations regarding the federal character in employment is a tough job but one that must be done to ensure equity and fairness.    To do otherwise will breed injustice which leads to unrests and violence in various forms.

On the principles of the federal character, he said “This is a plural society.   We have a lot of tribes, a lot of people with different demands.    How do you accommodate them? How do make sure that all Nigerians benefit from what we call the national cake? We have looked at the employment structure in the country and we discovered that certain states both in the South and in the North are grossly underrepresented.

“For instance, Baylesa and Ebonyi states are terribly backward compared to their counterparts in Abia state for example and if you come to the north, states like Nassarawa, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Jigawa are also grossly underrepresented.    This is so, not because    they don’t have qualified people but by history people from the affected states don’t always show enough interests in job offers by federal organizations.”

To address    this lopsidedness, the Ag. Chairman said his organization takes interest in the employment exercise by all federal MDAs    with a view to ensuring that “no organisation in the country owned by federal government has less than two and a half percent of the entire work force    and no one state should have more than three percent. The Federal Capital Territory should have one percent of workers in each organization.

“This gives us the opportunity of asking MDAs to give us the nominal roles every year so that we assess them. But I said there are some historical incidents where some MDAs have more than six percent of their workforce from one state of the federation,” Dr. Bukar-Abba said.

Asked if such MDAs will be forced to reduce their percentage to at most three percent in order to comply with the federal character regulation, he said that would not be necessary.

“No, we won’t do that. What we are saying is that when you are recruiting, you give preference to those who are underrepresented. If you want to take 3000 for example, such states should be given priority.    The wisdom is that at the end of the day over the years, you will find some equilibrium.

Have the MDAs been cooperating with the commission? 

The Chairman revealed that initially the commission had some difficulties. He said, “Even now we have some who are not fully cooperating but I think I can say over 70 percent of MDAs are responding and sending us their nominal role. As at last year, we could hardly get a nominal role of about 140 MDAs but now we have over 280 MDAs and we tell them in advance where there is lopsidedness so that they can look into it.

Military quota system

The Chairman said that the military has insisted on its quota system. Honestly, due to their historical antecedence the Army, the Air Force and the Navy have been practicing quota system for a very long time and therefore the most balanced organisations you find in the country.

“What is the difference between equity and quota system? In quota system you give everybody equal chances irrespective of whether he is underrepresented or overrepresented but in federal character we generalise in such a way that you give not less than two and a half percent and not more than three percent of the total to each state.    We complained about this but the military only told us that it is a security issue. The commissioners looked at it and we gave them a pass mark.    We have asked them to maintain what they know best but they should ensure that in recruitment, they should consider the local governments; let them not concentrate on one local government simply because you come from Isukwuato or Umuahia or you are a General from this place you take everybody from your locality, that isn’t acceptable.”

Penalty for breaches of your regulations

According to  Dr. Bukar-Abba, the constitution provides that those who breach the regulations could be sued in law courts but that the commission has approached the    National Assembly because the penalty is too small.

“If you violate the regulations, you are only charged N50, 000.    This is very small for MDAs    that are very rich like NIMASA or other organizations and can easily pay N50, 000. We have therefore called for a review of the penalty. Another thing is if the NDA recruits without telling us we have no power to stop it because this will create problems for Nigerians.   This will cause more unemployment, so we are also asking the National Assembly to look into this area to find amicable solution for us.    It is very good provided Nigerians will look at it and it is one of the causes of the crises that we are in now; injustice in all forms. When we properly    address the problem of federal character, I think all these issues of insurgency and other forms of violence emanating from injustice would be reduced if not totally eliminated.