APC Leaders Angry As Buhari Appoints More Northerners

THERE was an outrage in the ruling All

Progressives Congress on Thursday over the

announcement of new appointments by President

Muhammadu Buhari.

Leaders of the APC, who spoke to The PUNCH,

complained that the appointments tilted in favour

of the North and said the party must move fast to

cope with the backlash of expected rumblings in

the polity.

“The President does not consult before making

most of these appointments and I can tell you that

Nigerians are going to term the party and the

President as a northern party and the President of

Northern Nigeria,” a leader of the party said to

one of our correspondents late on Tuesday.

Buhari, according to a statement by his Special

Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity,



Mr. Femi Adesina, on Thursday approved the

appointment of Babachir David Lawal from

Adamawa State as the Secretary to the

Government of the Federation.

He also named Mr. Abba Kyari from Borno state

as his Chief of Staff.

Other appointments approved by the President,

according to the statement, are those of Col.

Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retd.) as the new

Comptroller-General, Nigerian Customs Service;

Mr. Kure Martin Abeshi, Comptroller-General,

Nigerian Immigration Service; Senator Ita Enang,

Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly

Matters (Senate); and Suleiman Kawu as SSA on

National Assembly Matters (House of

Representatives).

Both Ali and Kawu are from Kano State and Abeshi

is from Nasarawa. Enang from Akwa Ibom State is

the only one from the south geo-political zone.

Adesina said all the appointments would take

immediate effect.

Three top national officers of the APC, who spoke

with one of our correspondents on condition of

anonymity shortly after the announcements were

made, wondered why the President was

appointing only northerners to positions to the

detriment of the southerners.

They said that the President was already giving the

party a bad name among Nigerians. They said they

had hoped that he would learn from the criticisms

that trailed his first appointments where more

northerners were appointed into sensitive

positions than southerners.

Before the latest appointments, the President had

also named only one southerner among the initial

nine appointments he made.

The northerners in the first appointments are the

Director-General of the State Services, Lawal

Daura; Acting Chairman of the Independent

National Electoral Commission, Mrs. Amina

Zakari; the Director, Department of Petroleum

Resources, Mr. Mordecai Danteni Baba Ladan; and

the Accountant-General of the Federation, Alhaji

Ahmed Idris.

Also in the first appointments are the President’s

Chief Security Officer, Abdulrahman Mani; State

Chief of Protocol, Mallam Abdullahi Kazaure; Aide-

De-Camp, Lt. Col. Muhammed Abubakar; and the

Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity,

Mallam Garba Shehu.

Only the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity,

Mr. Femi Adesina, hailed from Osun Staten in the

South-West.

Another APC leader said the party must devise a

way of managing the backlash that would follow

the appointments.

He said, “Though the President did not get much

votes from the South-East but we must not neglect

the zone in key appointments.

“Even the South-West that supported and was the

backbone of the party, what are we giving the zone

in appreciation? We need to be careful before the

party is destroyed.”

It was gathered that some leaders of the party

were already thinking of having an enlarged

meeting where the appointments would be

reviewed.

But another senior member of the APC said such a

meeting, if it would hold at all, would have to wait

until the party holds its Kogi State governorship

primary on Saturday.

A member of the state executive of APC in a South-

West state, said the appointments were lopsided

against the South.

He said, “When President Olusegun Obasanjo took

over, you saw balance in appointments as he

reflected federal character. President Goodluck

Jonathan too reflected a semblance of balance.

Buhari is pursuing a northern agenda. This is the

same agenda pursued by the late Sir Ahmadu

Bello, when everything was pro-North. Buhari

made six appointments at a go and five of them

are northerners.”

The Speaker of one of the Houses of Assembly in

the South-West, who spoke on condition of

anonymity, also described the new appointments

as shocking.

The Speaker, who is a member of the APC, said,

“This is shocking. It doesn’t speak well at all. The

South-West has been completely neglected and

the South-East too. The South-West was neglected

during the President Goodluck Jonathan years.

The South-West must rise up against this.”

Similarly, an APC chairman in another South-West

state, who also spoke on condition of anonymity,

said the list of the new appointees had left him

perplexed.

The chairman said, “This is not good at all. Why

should he choose everybody from the North? I am

sure he did not confide in anybody before drawing

up the list and making the announcement. We will

continue to watch. It is condemnable.”

In the same vein, an APC member of the House of

Representatives, said the leaders of the party in

the South-West were shocked by Buhari’s latest

appointments.

“He didn’t tell anybody. We are all shocked. The

real shocker would be when he is going to appoint

ministers. The only thing that would save us is that

he is mandated constitutionally to choose from all

states, otherwise, he would have chosen all the

ministers too from the North,” the female member

of parliament said.

The new SGF graduated from the Ahmadu Bello

University, Zaria, in 1979 with a Bachelor of

Engineering degree and worked with the Delta

Steel Company, Aladja, Nigerian External

Telecommunications Limited and Data Sciences

Limited before establishing his own ICT and

Telecommunications consulting firm in 1990.

Kyari, the new Chief of Staff to the President, holds

Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the

University of Cambridge and the University of

Warwick in Law and Sociology.

The new Comptroller-General of Customs, holds

Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Criminology.

He was military administrator of Kaduna State

from 1996 to 1998.

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