TheCable

Nigerian lawyer Festus Keyamo has spoken against condemnation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointments, which are believed to favour his northern region.

Public concerns had been growing about the pattern of Buhari’s appointments, and he did himself no help on Thursday when he announced Babachir David Lawal from Adamawa state as secretary to the government of the federation and Abba Kyari from Borno state as his chief of staff.

His other appointments for the day – Hameed Ibrahim Ali, comptroller-general, Nigeria Customs Service; Kure Martin Abeshi, comptroller-general, Nigerian Immigration Service; Ita S.J. Enang, SSA to the president on national assembly matters (senate); Suleiman A. Kawu, SSA to the president on national assembly matters (house of representatives) – were also dominated by northerners.

Responding to public criticism of the ‘ethnocentric’ appointments, Keyamo said Buhari is free to appoint anyone from any part of the country into any position, so long good governance is not compromised.

“The so-called ‘uproar’ over the perceived ‘lopsided’ appointments made so far by President Buhari is nothing but an orchestrated frustration of a few jobless politicians who depend only on government appointments as their means of livelihood and, of course, the noise of the latest opposition party in town. The majority of Nigerians want to see good governance, pure and simple, and care less about the ethnic origin of those appointed into positions,” he said.

“My worry is that the decade-long general division of government positions into ‘juicy’ and ‘non-juicy’, and the mentality that these few ‘juicy’ positions must be shared equally amongst the major ethnic groups was nothing but a contraption of the old order, from which we have just liberated ourselves.

“To my mind, all government appointments pose an equal challenge to those appointed as a call to higher service of fatherland. All public positions come with an equal responsibility to be honest, forthright and dedicated. To go further to classify them as ‘juicy’ or ‘non-juicy’ is just a euphemism for positions that have enough money from which to steal and those that are ‘dry’. Therefore, any agitation from a section of the country to get ‘juicy’ positions is only an agitation for their kinsmen to be appointed to steal enough from which they would benefit.

“I therefore unreservedly condemn, in the strongest of terms, the so-called ‘uproar’ about ‘juicy positions’ going only to a certain section of this country. All sections of this country should be happy and content with whatever positions that the President deems fit, at the end of the day, to give to their kinsmen.

“After all, the President still has a long way to go with appointments. He has not even filled up to five percent of available positions. Please, let the President be.”