Representation in federal appointments: A call for equity
The Daily Trust of 18th July, 2018, page 7 carried the nomination of Alhaji Shehu Umar Danyaya as commissioner in the Federal Civil Service Commission among others representing Niger State by President Mohammadu Buhari. Immediately after the announcement, some tribal jingoists and ethnic champions, who have found a new job of creating unnecessary crisis among […]
The Daily Trust of 18th July, 2018, page 7 carried the nomination of Alhaji Shehu Umar Danyaya as commissioner in the Federal Civil Service Commission among others representing Niger State by President Mohammadu Buhari. Immediately after the announcement, some tribal jingoists and ethnic champions, who have found a new job of creating unnecessary crisis among the peaceful people of Niger State, this few minorities, who are ready to murder sleep in order to promote their tribal interest, are at it again. This time around, they are creating mountain out of a molehill. They are accusing the people of Zone C of dominating other zones in federal appointment.
The generality of the people of our great state respect our values of love for one another, social justice and equity, with the exception of a few who are always ready to fan the embers of tribal hatred on the slightest excuse, and beat the war drums for ethnic reasons.
While we are tempted to ignore their needless and meaningless cries of domination by the people of Kontagora Emirate, we find it worthy to educate the gullible innocent public in order to arrest their effort at inciting the people against one another.
History has shown that when it came to political appointment, the people of Zone A have been enjoying a position of advantage over the B and C Zones since the creation of Niger State. While there are so much official records to support our assertion, we have decided to limit our discussion within the timeframe of 2015 to date.
Even though this write up is not an academic exercise, the table below contains the list of federal political appointments by the Buhari administration. The table is used for analysis to demonstrate that in spite of the apparent domination by a certain zone, the other two zones have remained calm, not because they lack what it takes to cry foul, but for the need to allow peace to reign.
Before we analyse the table below, let us state that since the creation of Niger State since 1976, nobody has ever occupied the position of a commissioner in the Federal Civil Service Commission from Zone C. It has always been moving from Zone A to Zone B. This is the only time that anybody outside the two zones of A and B has been nominated to that office. Why then should any person from the other zones see this as wrong? For 42years, generation after generation, we have never protested. This attempt by some people to comment negatively will only incite and remind our people of the injustice of the past. Let’s allow the sleeping dog lay.
Out of 20 federal appointments given to Niger State by the Buhari administration, 10 appointees are from Zone ‘A’ Senatorial District, while 8 are from ‘B’ and 2 from Zone ‘C’. That is to say that 50% are from Zone ‘A’, 40% from Zone ‘B’ and only 10% are from Zone ‘C’. The fact speaks for itself.
Where will the cry of domination come from? How can 10% amount to domination? From the table, if you observe, 2 heads of federal higher institutions domiciled in Niger State are from Zone ‘B’, while one is from Zone ‘A’. This is not because Zone ‘C’ lack qualified persons that can manage the institutions, nor because we don’t know how to wipe sentiments to score political points.
Niger State is the only state where federal medical centre is located outside the state capital. Why the exception? May be because the people of Zone ‘A’ have dominated the Civil Service at federal and the state level. So, they can skew the process of decision making to favour their people. Otherwise, what other explanation can you offer? To make matters worse, the two tertiary health institutions in Niger State are located in the zonal capital of Zones ‘A’ and ‘B’. There is no tertiary Health Institution located anywhere in Zone ‘C’ we are sure any effort by the people of Zone C to attract such, will attract uproar from the professional tribal champions. Are the people of Zone ‘C’ condemned to underdevelopment and underrepresentation forever? When shall this slavery end?
The federal Commissioner of INEC is from Zone ‘A’. At the time of nominating a Resident Electoral Commissioner, another person from Zone ‘A’ was nominated. It took the gracious intervention of the Senate to change the trend. Instead of replacing the appointee from Zone ‘C’, which has been the only slot Zone C consistently occupy since 1999, it again went to Zone B. What is wrong if a person from Zone C get nominated into Federal Civil Service Commission? What is wrong with a little fair play for peaceful coexistence?
This paper has become necessary for the purpose of enlightenment and to stop tribal champions from creating distrust among our people. To arrest this ugly trend, in our next paper we would analyse the Niger State Civil Service and its composition local government by local government, including the composition of manpower in the Judiciary and the Legislature. Then we would proceed to look at Federal and State Board appointments.
We wish to draw the attention of the general public to recent employment of Junior Staff by CBN, Minna Branch. Where the Secretary of the branch who is from Zone A employed over 80% treasury clerks and drivers etc from Zone A, it is a public knowledge but we choose to look the other way to allow peace to reign. But since the matter has descended this low, we will write the Federal Character Commission and ask for a review and call for the punishment of the perpetrators, since it is a breach of the Federal Character principle. Please, don’t throw stones if you are living in a glass house; for what follows you may not know.
Wamba wrote this piece from Minna, Niger State