For the duration of his tenure, one critical challenge which President Muhammadu Buhari would have to contend with is to prove to the contrary the general feeling among the Igbo population that he hates them passionately! Among the litany of allegations raised against his candidacy during the last electioneering campaign by the irrepressible Femi Fani Kayode is that President Buhari is incapable of diluting his tribalistic and fundamentalist religious colours. For those of us who campaigned for the APC in the South East during the last general elections, the pervading feeling was in sync with this conclusion such that we were largely regarded as uninformed youths who it was obviously beyond our ken to fully understand the handwriting on the wall. I must confess that in one instance, I was so moved by the passion with which one old folk narrated instances of President Buhari’s hatred and disdain for the Igbos that I almost backed out. He said that President Buhari still remains one of the few Huasa/Fulani ex-soldiers who have refused to let go their anger against the Igbos on the memories of the civil war.
He told us of how in 1977 for instance, during the military regime of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the Supreme Military Council which had no Igbo as a member, (but which had Buhari and Shehu Yaradua as members) had resolved among other things to site a steel rolling mill in Enugu in order to maximally exploit the huge iron ore deposit of the region and even more so, to stimulate and harness the proven industrial ingenuity of the Igbo. The decision had been reached and sealed only to be later cancelled at the behest of Buhari. That the steel mill was later to be relocated to Katsina, vis-à-vis the now moribund Katsina Rolling Mill, was all too evident of his hand in it. Even our much vaunted fact that Buhari’s domestic assistant was an Igbo, which we employed to underscore his confidence in Igbo was regarded with derisive cynicism.
But all these are gone since Buhari, in spite of all these still emerged the President of the federal republic of Nigeria, howbeit, largely without Igbo vote. But therein lays the challenge and the opportunity. Challenge for him to prove the cynics wrong and the opportunity for him to bind the nagging wounds of the civil war and rebuild the nation. This is even more so given the precarious and uncertain position of the Igbo in the prevailing political shenanigan of the APC. In a political arrangement where an Igbo is neither the President, Vice President, President of the Senate or Speaker, Chief Justice of the Federation nor the President of the Court of Appeal, Chief of Defence Staff or Inspector General of Police, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, or even head of either the Customs or Immigration departments, etc; the President has a compelling burden now, more than at any other time, to prove to Igbos that they are still members of the Nigerian family and that he, as the father of the nation, does not just regard them as being only good to be in his kitchen!
The recent precipitate appointment of Mohammed Dikwa as the acting Accountant General of the Federation does not give hope that Mr. President is sensitive to the sensibilities of all parts of Nigeria. In the first place, Mr. Dikwa is not the most senior ranking member of staff that is next in rank to the retiring Accountant General; neither is he the most qualified, other than the fact that he is a northerner from the ethnic stock of the President. His appointment is therefore designed to present the nation with a fait accompli. Some analysts have even suggested that again, some hawks which allegedly usually surround President Buhari in his previous appointments might have taken over. It is perhaps plausible to claim that nothing has gone wrong given that Mr. Dikwa is just on an acting capacity, yet no one is deceived.
Howbeit, it has to be emphasized that at no other time has it been as compelling to correct the age-old injustice against the Igbo in the federal civil service as now; and President Buhari who has assured us he belongs to all of us must look into it. As President Obama of the USA once noted, an oath sworn by a president should be an oath to God and to his country, and not to his party of his faction; spelt tribe! And he must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of his stewardship. Without mincing words, let it be stated that it’s the turn of the Igbo to produce the next Accountant General of the federation. Of the 10 previous Accountants General of the federation since our independence, no Igbo have occupied the position! Out of the number, the Yorubas of the South West have produced 6; the North, of the Hausa/Fulani stock, have 3, while Edo state of the South-South produced one!
For the avoidance of doubt, it might be necessary to highlight the statistics if only to underscore this glaring imbalance. Mr. F.R Cardoso, from Lagos State who was the first Accountant General of the federation, served from the 9th of July 1963 and remained so until the end of July, 1973, a whopping 10 solid years! He was succeeded by C.E.T Nylander, also from Lagos State, who served for barely one year as his tenure ended on 31st of August, 1974. Alhaji W.T Dambo, from Kaduna State took over the mantle from the 31st of August, 1974 until the end of August 1982, a wholesome eight years! Mr. I.I Iyeyemi, from Edo State stepped in and served from August 1982 until January, 1987. He is yet the only person of the South/South extraction to have held the position. He was succeeded by Chief S.O Olusemo, from Ondo State, who served from January 1987 up till October 1995, a solid eight years! Thereafter, Alhaji M.A Argungu from Kebbi State (1995 – 1999); J.K Naiyeju, from Ondo State (1999 – 2005), Ibrahim Dankwambo, from Gombe, (2005 – 2010), A.D. Ogunsanya, from Osun State (2011 – 2011), and the retiring Chief Jonas Otunla, from Oyo State (2011 – 2015) took their turns in that succession.
In all these, there are no Igbo in the line-up! This cannot be a suggestion that there have not been some qualified Igbo civil servants or competent professionals of Igbo extraction that can live up to the demands of that very high office. It could only have been a case of deliberate exclusion which clearly goes against the spirit and letters of the Constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, vis-à-vis the federal character principle. Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally. If indeed President Buhari belongs to all of us as he proclaimed, he should employ the opportunity of the current vacancy to redress this embarrassing national indictment. It would no doubt be a portent way of reaching out to the Igbo in the spirit of his new role as the father of the nation. We would want to believe that nothing has gone wrong notwithstanding the precipitate appointment of Mr. Dikwa as the acting Accountant General of the federation, else it would be seen that President Buhari, like the proverbial Leopard, cannot change his spots. But he can hardly afford to adorn such posture for he is no longer Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the Katsina State but President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria!
Nwokoye, a lawyer, wrote from Aba.