Buhari’s appointments: A risky North and Southwest political calculation

Recently, BusinessDay Sunday stirred up a hornet’s nest with an explosive report, titled“81 of Buhari’s 100 appointees are Northerners”. A week later, thepresidency, rattled, fired back! Femi Adesina, President Buhari’s senior media adviser, published a list, which showed that 82 of the 157 appointments made by President Buhariso far were actually from the South, and 75 from the North. Adesina said the government’s list “put the lie” to the “mischievous” claims about Buhari’s appointments, adding that“It is, indeed,false for anyone to say that President Buhari’s appointments are lopsided”. Butwas he right?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “lopsided” as: “with one side bigger, higher, etc. than the other; not equally balanced”. Thisdefinitionsuggests that Buhari’s appointments are lopsided if, indeed, 82 were from the South, and 75 from the North! Furthermore, the fact that some states, such as Ogun, have up to 20 appointees, while some, such as Abia and Kebbi, have just 2 or 3, shows that the appointments are absurdly lopsided. Moreover, as this piece will show, the president’s appointments are biased against the South-South and the Southeast, while favouring the North and the Southwest.

President Buhari’sappointments are a matter of legitimate public interest, and,in discussing such issues, sophistry must not trump truth. Sophists, Plato’s bugbears in The Republic, prize rhetorical success over philosophical truth; they make weak arguments appear strong through rhetorical devices, such as false comparison or playing the numbers game. The presidency and some journalists were guilty of this by using the headline figures, South 82 vs North 75, to score rhetorical points.

Yet, any analysis of the president’s appointments must go beyond the headlines and be based on both quantitative and qualitative criteria. For instance, having 82 appointees from the South as against 75 from the North is irrelevant if northerners hold more important and high-profile jobs thansoutherners. After all, as we know from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”.

So, what does the analysis show? Well, it shows that Buhari’s appointments are, indeed, lopsided in the sense of disadvantaging the South-South and the Southeast. The North-South analytical framework aggregates the South and masks how the South-South and Southeast are treated within it. Yet, the real analytical question is how Buharitreats the South-South and the Southeast, which didn’t vote for him in the 2015 presidential election.

Now, for analytical purposes, let’sbreak down the composition of the Buhari government into different components based on their relative power, influence and importance. At the top is the president’s inner circle, followed by his personal aides. These are people that, as Buhari himself once put it, “will work closely with me”. In any government, the president’s inner circle and personal aides, such as special advisers and senior special assistants, are more important than most ministers. In fact, some ministers may not have easy access to the president, but his inner circle and aides are his “eyes and ears” on a daily basis. In the Nigerian context, the security appointees are also more important than ministers. So, let’s put them after the president’s aides. Then, you have the ministers, and, finally, the agency appointees. So, how are these different categories – the inner circle, personal aides, security apparatus, ministers and agency appointments – composed? Let’s start with the inner circle.

Of course, as we know, President Buhari’s inner circle is entirely dominated by northerners. For instance, the president’s gatekeeper, his chief of staff, is a northerner, and his government’s gatekeeper, the secretary to the federal government, is also from the North, as are his aide de camp and chief protocol officer. Now, when you move down to the level of special advisers and senior special assistants, these are dominated by the Southwest and the North. Out of the 10 special advisers and senior special assistants named in the presidency’s list, 5 are from the Southwest, 3 from the North, and two from the South-South.

Surely, if we accept that the president’s inner circle and aides are his “eyes and ears”, those he listens to regularly in running the country, and given the nature of the presidential system, with a powerful president, then the absence of anyone from the Southeast in Buhari’sinner sanctum, with the South-South barely getting a look-in,suggests a lack of inclusiveness at the heart of his government. That would count as lopsided in anyone’s book!

Next, let’s consider the military apparatus. Again, out of the 8 security chiefs on the presidency’s list, 6 are from the North, with only 2 from the South; one, Chief of Defence Staff, from Southwest, and the other, Chief of Naval Staff, from the South-South. None from the Southeast.If you include the paramilitary, the heads of customs and immigration are northerners. Onecan surely say that the security arm of the Buhari government is controlled almost entirely by the North; that’s lopsided in my book, and I guess in yours too!

So, what about ministers?Buhari’s cabinet must constitutionally reflect the country’s geographical spread. The question, therefore, is who holds the most important portfolios?Well, defence, interior and justice, the security and law and order portfolios, are all held by northerners. The frontline socio-economic ministries, such as finance, health, solid minerals, and power, works and housing (led by Babatunde Fashola, who Buhari himself once described as “super minister”) are led by the Southwest. Of course,the vice president, also from the Southwest, heads the national economic team. However, it’s worth noting that someone from the South-South or the Southeast holds each of the other important portfolios, namely foreign affairs, industry, trade and investment, the central bank, budget and planning, agriculture, transport, and petroleum. Although in the case of petroleum, President Buhari holds on bizarrely to the substantive post. The truth, however, is that Buhari’scabinet is fairly balanced, although, in my view, the North and the Southwest still have the upper hands!

Finally, the much-talked about agency appointments, which dominate the presidency’s list.One publication wrote, “Buhari has appointed 82 southerners and 75 northerners, who would have believed that?” It went on to say that “He has (even) appointed more people from the Southeast, the bastion of opposition to his government, than the Northcentral”. But such rhetorical statements conflate quantity with quality. Surely, being an executive director or a member of board of an agency is important, but not as important as being its chairman, MD or CEO. An agency can have many EDs or board members, but usually will have only one chairman, MD or CEO. So, using that parameter, what does the analysis of the presidency’s list show? Well, it shows that out of the 68 people that hold the post of Chairman, DG, MD, CEO or the equivalent, 30 are from the North, 20 from the Southwest, 9 from the South-South, and 9 from the Southeast.

So, it is clear from the above analysis that Buhari’s appointments disadvantage the South-South and the Southeast, but favour the North and the Southwest.This, of course, reflects the outcome of the 2015 presidential election, when Buhari received a paltry 300,000 votes from the Southeast, lost massively in the South-South, but got a whopping 2,433,193 from the Southwest. Yet, Buhari should have made more efforts to woo the South-South and the Southeast, althoughit would take a seismic shift for him or his party to win in the two geopolitical zones in 2019. As I argued previously in this column, APC must consolidate its North and Southwest alliance in order to have a chance of winning again in 2019.

But would plum appointments be enough to keep the Southwest onside? Well, not with the growing disaffections among key Southwest APC leaders, and, more importantly,Buhari’s failure to address the issue of political restructuring, which may dominate Yoruba politics in 2019. By disadvantaging the South-South and the Southeast in his appointments, while favouring the Southwest, Buhari may have entrenched primordial ill-feelings against him and his party in the South-South and the Southeast, yet without any guarantee of a payoff in the Southwest in 2019!

Olu Fasan