A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has berated President Muhammadu Buhari over the appointment of Professor Ibrahim Gambari, who the group identified as his tribesman, as his Chief of Staff (COS), arguing that the appointment reflected another show of the president’s nepotism inclination in the governance of Nigeria. The group noted that the action has diminished the president from the status of a statesman and a nationalist.
HURIWA criticised the appointment of Ibrahim Gambari into public office, recalling him from retirement, even years after he was a minister four decades ago.
The group also complained that the choice of the Chief of Staff, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, who was said to be 75 years of age shows that President Buhari loves gerontocracy rather than democracy under which he was elected.
HURIWA in a statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, protested that it is unfortunate that for five years, Mr. President has been consistent and has indeed ramped up his soft spot and his passion for always and often picking his tribesmen/women and religious associates from the north into strategic national offices since the last five years.
HURIWA declared that “with the rash of appointments into the federal character Commission (FCC) and the Police Trust fund ( PTF ) in which northern Muslims are nominated as chairmen and executive secretaries, it is now clear that contrary to the widely held belief that it was the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, that was to be blamed for sectional appointments made since the last five years, the President himself is directly responsible for these appointments that are in breach of the federal character principles enshrined in the constitution.”
HURIWA cited section 14 (3) of the Nigerian constitution of 1999 as amended that states thus: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies”.
HURIWA further said: “The demise of the immediate past Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, was seen by some observers as the end of nepotism and sectionalism in the Buhari administration because those accusing the then powerful Chief of staff from Borno State assumed that as someone who belonged to the infamous KADUNA MAFIA, and had lived in Kaduna metropolis which is the centre of Pro-northern politics, that he was instrumental to the heavily biased pro-northern appointments made by the current administration since the past five years.
“But now with these many appointments by President Muhammadu Buhari made after the demise of the Chief of Staff, it has manifested clearly that President Muhammadu Buhari is personally responsible for these one-sided strategic appointments given to the North.
“Gambari is Fulani. That the President does not even trust a Southerner as his Chief of Staff shows that the much-touted legacy that Muhammadu Buhari is a nationalist and a statesman is at best a ruse and a propaganda.”