APC leaders not happy as Buhari appoints more northerners

Firstclass newsline gathered that 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 a source, 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."
Firstclass newsline 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.
Firstclassnewsline.net