As Tinubu intensifies war against the South-East, By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Monday, August 7, the Senate approved 45 of the 48 cabinet candidates that President Bola Tinubu had forwarded to it. Unexpectedly, it postponed the confirmation of three nominations because to unspecified security concerns: Stella Okotete, a nominee from Delta State; Nasir el-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna State; and Sani Danladi, a former senator from Taraba.

On July 28, August 3 and August 4, Tinubu sent the Senate three separate letters containing the names of the 48 nominees, the last of which included Mr. Festus Keyamo, a former Delta State minister of state for labor and employment, and Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, a replacement for Dr. Maryam Shetty, whose nomination was withdrawn.The development has many Nigerians baffled because nominees should have overcome the security barrier before appearing before the Senate. Does this imply that the DSS and other security organizations lacked due diligence?

I don’t think so! Therefore, there must be information the ruling class is keeping from Nigerians. But whatever it is, if the three are not exonerated, especially El-Rufai, I will be pleasantly surprised. El-Rufai will be in Tinubu’s cabinet if he wants him there. After all, the “Uncommon Senate President” revealed on Monday that the senators had received significant rewards for letting the nominees off the hook easily, including Bello Muhammad from Sokoto State, who was admitted to the university with only two credits. To the embarrassment of his colleagues, who knew he was on hot mic, Akpabio, grandmaster in the art of winning loyalty, gushed, “A token has been sent to our various accounts by the Clerk of the National Assembly in order to enable all of us to enjoy our holidays.” Evidently, the effervescent and tense Senate president lost control.

When the video started trending on Wednesday, a colleague of mine and fellow Chevening scholar from Kaduna State sent me a text message: “This guy (Akpabio) is not fit to lead the Senate. I was shocked when I heard him live.” My response was straightforward: “I am shocked that you were shocked that Akpabio said that.” To be fair, what is happening under Akpabio’s watch has been the norm since 1999. Perhaps, the only difference is that given his pedigree, he will take the art a notch higher than his predecessors. The money paid into their accounts to enjoy their holidays was a back rub from an appreciative presidency for a job well done. As Senator Shehu Sani noted on Wednesday, “crediting the legislators accounts are done under mute button, the Uncommon Senate President mistakenly pressed the alarm”.

Nevertheless, I am knocked for six that some Nigerians are yet to come to the realisation that whatever we thought were the shortcomings of the Ahmad Lawan-led ninth Senate, the tenth Senate will be far worse. Akpabio will not only jump whenever Tinubu wishes, he will ask how high. But that is a matter for another day. Back to Tinubu’s 48-member cabinet. First, it is too bloated for a country on the edge of bankruptcy and in dire need of cutting down the cost of governance. But the second and most important issue which Tinubu’s cabinet has raised is his contempt for the South-East.

With the highly skewed nominations, the president simply intensified his war of attrition against a region whose only crime is that one of their own, Peter Obi, had the guts to run for the presidency of his country. In assembling his 48-member cabinet, Tinubu willfully shortchanged the region and violated the Federal Character principle by refusing to accede them a zonal representation as he did to others. This shabby, in-your-face treatment for a zone with equal stake like others in the Nigeria project is condemnable.

The 1999 Constitution stipulates that there must be one minister from each of the 36 states of the federation. Presidents have also used their discretion to add six more ministers, one from each of the six geo-political zones in what is now known as zonal representation to bring the number to 42. Tinubu added 12 more ministers to the list, thus bringing the number to 48. But an analysis of the ministerial spread shows that the South-East is the only region without a zonal representation under Tinubu’s cynical watch. Ordinarily, the South-East as the only zone with five states is grossly shortchanged in terms of political representation. In the Senate, they have only 15 senators while four other zones with six states each – South-West, South-South, North-East, North-Central – have 18 senators and North-West with seven states has 21 senators.

Not only that, by virtue of the inequity in the number of states, all the other five zones are already ahead of the South-East in the constitutionally mandatory allocation of ministers – North-West (7), North-East, North-Central, South-West, South-South with six ministers each while South-East has only five. If fairness and equity were to be the lightening rod of governance in Nigeria, the South-East is the zone where the president should use his discretionary power to give extra slot(s). But anyone who expects Tinubu to do that neither knows the man nor his politics.

In his distribution of the extra ministerial slots, he gave additional three ministers each to North-West and South-West, making it a total of 10 and nine ministers respectively for the zones; North-East, North-Central and South-South got two extra ministers, a total of eight for each of the zones. Thus, in the 48-member cabinet, South-East has an insignificant 10.4 per cent representation. This exclusionary absurdity is unconscionable. The implication is that rather than rejecting, Tinubu is doubling down on Buhari’s politics of exclusion playbook as enunciated at the U.S. Institute of Peace in July 2015.

For those who may have forgotten, here is Buhari’s doctrine. Tasked by Dr. Pauline Baker, the President Emeritus of The Fund for Peace, on inclusive government, Buhari retorted: “I hope you have a copy of the election results. The constituents, for example, gave me 97per cent (of the vote) cannot in all honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me five per cent.” Tinubu is on the same trajectory. But isn’t that view harebrained, grossly mistaken and mischievous? Right now, Tinubu’s party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, holds sway in two of the five South-East states – Imo and Ebonyi. The three other dominant political parties – Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is in power in Enugu, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, dominates Anambra politics and Labour Party calls the shot in Abia. So, APC controls 40 per cent of the states in the South-East.

Granted, Tinubu did not win any of the South-East states in the presidential election, but even in the South-South, without the electoral antics of former Rivers governor, Nyesom Wike, which gave him the State, he did not win anywhere else in the region. Labour Party carried the day in Edo, Cross River and Delta states while PDP took Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa. Even in the South-West, PDP won in Osun State while Labour took Lagos. So, why is Tinubu singling out the South-East for reprisals? 

As if that was not bad enough, the president ensured that the South-East got what is unarguably the worst quality of representation since the return of democracy in 1999. He clearly sidelined the region’s first eleven and went for people who will be beholden to interests that are adversarial to the region. The only reason why anyone would appoint Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, Nkeruika Onyejeocha, Uche Nnaji and Doris Uzoka as ministers from South-East is to rub insult into the injury of under-representation. Tinubu’s war against South-East cannot be more brazen but he will fail just as his predecessor failed.