ATTAHIRU: Buhari appoints new COAS

Expectation high on Security Council lopsidedness

In less than 24 hours, President Muhammadu Buhari will be appointing a new chief of army staff to replace the late Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru who died alongside 10 others in a plane crash in Kaduna Friday.

The scramble and the speculations are already raging.

But the core problem, which analysts believe is another test for the administration, is how the president will balance the lopsided national security.

Past leaders and leaders of thought, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Junai Mohammed, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, retired Gen Theophilus Danjuma, and others have criticized Buhari for the composition of the council.

According to the Third Schedule, Part 1-K of the Nigerian Constitution, the National Security Council comprises:

The president, his vice president, the Chief of Defence Staff, interior minister, defence minister, foreign affairs minister, the National Security Adviser, the IGP, and such persons the president may choose.

Four of these members, including Buhari, Defence Minister Bashir Mahashi, IGP Baba Usman, NSA Babagana Monguno currently are from the north; two from the southwest, while one comes from the southeast.

Others Buhari chooses mostly are the four service chiefs: the late Ibrahim Attahiru (north), CDS Lucky Irabor (south-south), Air Marshall Isiaka Amao (southwest), and Chief of Naval Staff is Rear Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo (north).

Others, mainly northerners, are AGF Abubakar Malami, DG of the National Intelligence Agency Ahmed Rufai, and DG, Directorate of State Services Yusuf Bichi.

The pan-Igbo group Ohaneze hs urged the president to use the opportunity to consider the southeastern representation in the security council.

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“We are not lobbying for a Southeast officer as the replacement for late COAS but we are drawing the attention of President Buhari to evaluate the privileges of being unpredictable and reverse the suspicion that he is biased against Southern Nigeria leading the Army,’ the group said in an official statement by Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, Ohaneze’s secretary-general.

“Every geopolitical zone should be represented in the security council to boost national reintegration and restoration of confidence amongst other Nigerians that Mr President ‘belongs to nobody but everyone.’”

Speculations are now rife Buhari may consider a southeast candidate as a replacement for the late Attahiru.

However, the secessionist agitation rocking the region may present another headache for the president doing everything to hold the beleaguered nation together.

Among military top shot in the army in the thick of the speculation is Maj.-Gen. Danjuma Ali-Keffi, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Division Nigerian Army, Kaduna.

He’s not the most senior in the army, though.