Oodua group condemns Buhari’s NPA new appointments
By Salisu Akintunde
Recent appointment of Hadiza Bala Usman as the new Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, (NPA) has come under severe criticisms by a notable pan-Yoruba group.
“Four people again have been appointed to man the NPA. All but one of them are Northern Muslims and from Mr President’s ethnic stock. This is a version of political extremism and high degree intolerance by the current leadership”, the Oodua Nationalist Coalition, (ONAC) has said.
On Tuesday, President Buhari appointed Ms Usman as the port authority MD. He also appointed Executive Director, Mohammed Bello-Koko, Executive Director (Engineering) and Executive Director (Operations), Dr Sekonte Davies in a renewed wave of insensitivity to the call on the President to have respect for diversity and other interests that make up the democratic space.
In the statement issued on Wednesday and made available to Irohinoodua and signed by the Director of Research, Ahmed Olubodun ONAC said the latest appointment reflects the inner workings of the mind of President Mohammadu Buhari as a Fulani-centric leader who thinks the best leaders of the country can only be found among his own ethnic and religious stock.
“It is a pointer to disunity, the spread of hate and scorn for President Buhari to see good character and integrity from the prism of his own parochial ethnic and religious sentiments. The recent allegation that the Chief of Army Staff, Yusuf Buratai, a public servant bought houses in Dubai running into millions of naira is a clear indication that the appointments made by the President were not informed by integrity but by ethnic considerations,” ONAC stated.
Olubodun said the consistent appointment of Hausa-Fulani Northerners to control strategic positions and now to chair the Ports, when in reality the North has no access to the sea, is an anathema in a democracy. It is like appointing an Igbo or Yoruba man to head the Nomadic School. The group said that it is now clear that if not for the constitutional provision that each state should have a Minister, President Buhari would have appointed his ministers from his ethnic stock.
Why integrity and hardwork are key in making appointments, we have not seen anything to prove that those appointed have a better track record of discipline and accountability in their chosen trades except that they are of the same ethnic stock where the President comes from.
“What President Buhari has come to do is to entrench Hausa-Fulani domination which remains the evergreen dream of every Northern leader that has emerged, using the fight against corruption as a cover. The biggest corruption is to be insensitive to the yearnings of the people that elected the President. We warn that by the time other ethnic groups wake up from their self-imposed ignorance and naiveté, it will be too late in the day.” ONAC said while the President inisists the unity of the country is not ‘negotiable’ what he appears to mean is that the domination and manipulation of Nigeria by his Hausa-Fulani stock is not negotiable.