Ndigbo: A Steady Decline

Enugu State

Inspite of repeated cries of marginalisation by the Igbo of Nigeria's South east region, the discrimination which the people suffer in appointments and citing of projects assume new and frightening dimensions
By Victor Ugborgu
Since the beginning of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s administration in 2007, there has been a steady decline in the appointment of men and women of Igbo extraction into the federal cabinet or key government agencies.
Worried by the sad development, the five governors of the South eastern states on July 19, 2010 led a delegation of leaders of thought from the zone to President Goodluck Jonathan to protest the trend. They expressed concern over the development which they said was capable of annihilating the Igbo race. “We are concerned that some of the commissions and agencies headed only recently by South easterners are now being progressively replaced by our brothers and sisters from other zones whenever changes are made in the headship of such commissions,” they noted.
Governors Peter Obi (Anambra); Ikedi Ohakim (Imo); Sullivan Chime (Enugu); Martin Elechi (Ebonyi); and Theodore Orji (Abia), therefore, asked President Jonathan to correct the situation before it assumes a more frightening dimension. Though some analysts elect to believe that the governors visited the President majorly to discuss the high level of insecurity in the zone, yet the delegation is not far from the truth.
A few examples suffice. When the tenure of Maurice Iwu, Professor of Pharmacology and former chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ended in May this year, many Nigerians, particularly Ndigbo, knew that the federal government would not give him a second term. Even his replacement with Attahiru Jega, a Professor of Political Science from the North was not a surprise either. Iwu’s replacement with a personality from another ethnic stock seems to have justified the fear of marginalisation of Ndigbo and allegations of a grand design by the Presidency to scheme the South east geo-political zone out of strategic positions in key agencies and commissions.
It was seemingly the same ethnic card that was played when Dora Akunyili was dropped as Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). Some Igbo leaders had argued that the appointment of Akunyili as Minister of Information and Communications was not necessary since there were other qualified persons from her native Anambra state to take the ministerial slot while Akunyili remained at NAFDAC. Better still, some observers reasoned that the presidency ought to have replaced Akunyili with another personality from the Igbo stock instead of pushing it to the North central. The replacement of the Amazon, as Akunyili is fondly called at her duty post as Director-General of NAFDAC, with a personality from another ethnic stock was to be only one in a long list of ‘misfortune’ in federal appointments that laid in stock for Ndigbo in the present administration.
Notedly, at the beginning of the current administration the South east lost the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN) and the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) headed by Professor Chukwuma Soludo and Irene Chigbue, respectively. The Source gathered that Soludo had played into the hands of a cabal after his job following his ‘naira re-denomination’ project. Those who opposed Soludo allegedly included Shamsudeen Usman at the time a deputy governor of the CBN who openly faulted his action. His adversaries also cashed in on the investments the CBN made in the African Finance Corporation, AFC to demand Soludo’s replacement. The anti-Soludo campaign was intended to paint him as corrupt, a spendthrift and someone lacking experience in investments. He was invited by the National Assembly as well as a government- constituted inquiry and found not guilty. Despite this clean bill of health Soludo was not reappointed as CBN governor when his tenure ended. Instead, he was deceived into joining the Anambra state governorship election as the People's Democratic Party (PDP) flagbearer. He lost.
Soludo was replaced with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from Kano in Nigeria’s North west zone.
Chigbue’s case seemed to be a well designed and programmed effort by an interest group to oust her from the leadership of the BPE. When the heat started, all her major privatisation transactions were discredited. Prominent politicians from the North were irked when Chigbue ceded NICON Insurance to Jimoh Ibrahim, a multi-millionaire and Lagos-based newspaper proprietor. The Source learnt that at the inception of the present administration the North had requested late President Yar’Adua to ensure that the region gets the headship of strategic ministries and agencies. They included the ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Defence; Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC), CBN and BPE.
From all indications, President Jonathan may not be in a hurry to right the wrongs that have been the lot of Ndigbo with federal appointments 40 years after the civil war.
For instance, in February this year when President Jonathan in acting capacity inaugurated 17 new permanent secretaries, of the lot, only one person, Anthony Ozodinobi is from the South east. The others included Salah Mohammed (Jigawa), Wiloughby Steven (Lagos), Odusote Abimbola(Ogun); Mohammed Bashir(Sokoto), Baba Umar Farouk (Bauchi), Biodun Olorunfemi (Kogi) and Ibrahim Daudu(Gombe). Others were Aliyu Salihu (Zamfara), Fatima Bamidele(Oyo), Ibrahim Maha(Kano), Josephine Awosika(Delta), Sheile Musa (Borno); Charles Borat (Kaduna), Dauda Kibu (Nasarawa); Anne Ene-Ita (Cross River); and Martin Humuobi (Edo).
The Source learnt that the emergence of the 17 permanent secretaries followed an examination conducted by the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) for 208 officers of directorate cadre out of which 78 scaled through from where 17 of them finally emerged.
Following the introduction of the eight-year tenure policy by the federal government for permanent secretaries and directors, including heads of parastalas and statutory corporations, nine permanent secretaries were retired which created the vacancies that were thrown open for directors in the service. Directors that underwent the test were 24 from Ogun State, 14 from Delta, 13 from Kaduna; 10 from Jigawa, 15 from Bauchi; Sokoto, five; Zamfara, five; and one from Bayelsa. None came from any of the South east states.
Even among the nine permanent secretaries that were retired, none was from the South east, suggesting that no Igbo man or woman occupied the position in the last eight years. This development has continued to draw flaks from other sections of the country, particularly the South east who see in the development elements of ethnic annihilation. They may be right.
Especially against the backdrop of the fact that it is the same story in the recent appointment of Supreme Court Justices and Court of Appeal Judges. The South east delegation to the President on July 19 reflected the mood of Ndigbo when they posited that “the South east is not proportionately represented at the Supreme court in spite of a large number of qualified legal luminaries or even at the Appeal Court in the zone.”
Those nominated for appointment as Supreme Court Justices include Justice S. Galadima from North Central zone and Justice Rose Vivur from the South west. Their appointments were necessitated by the recent retirement of some Justices, including I. Kutigi and B.O. Aderemi.
President Jonathan said the new appointments were in conformity with section 231(2) of the 1999 constitution which gives the president powers to appoint a Justice of the Supreme Court acting on the recommendation of the National Judicial Commission, (NJC), and subject to confirmation by the Senate.
Critics, particularly those of Igbo extraction, have continued to accuse successive governments at the centre of playing politics with appointments and federal projects meant for the south east. For instance, it took former President Olusegun Obasanjo the desire to garner Igbo votes in the run-up to the 2003 presidential election to approve the dualisation of the strategic Owerri-Onitsha Road project.
Even at that, the contract was awarded to Consolidate Construction Company, CCC, a Chinese firm with no proven record of expertise in road construction in Nigeria at the cost of N24billion, instead of awarding the contract to Julius Berger that quoted N56 billion. Seven years after the flag-off of the project, the road is yet to be completed, despite splitting the contract between Julius Berger and CCC later.
The dualisation of the Owerri-Onitsha Road was to be taken to ridiculous level by Seye Ogunlewe former Minister of Works under Obasanjo when he declared that the completion period of the contract would span over 10 years. He reeled out other conditions that could facilitate the contract like the re-imposition of the N1.50 per litre fuel tax, proceeds of which he claimed would help complete the contract. But he failed to explain to Nigerians why it took the federal government less than two years to complete and commission the Lagos-Benin by-pass and the Lagos-Ibadan-Abeokuta expressway.
These roads projects were completed on schedule– and with no conditions attached.
Added to this is the sure fact that the federal government has over the years failed to rehabilitate federal roads in the south east zone, thus marking the area out as high-risk in terms of accidents.
Another issue of grave concern is the situation of the Owerri and Enugu Airports. The federal government has not been forthcoming in the provision of necessary amenities since the upgrading of the two airports to cargo and international passenger airports respectively. This is based on the fact that the Obasanjo government had announced the upgrading of the two airports to international status without installing the necessary equipment to make them function in this stead. Even the five governors of the South east zone during their recent visit requested the president to formally upgrade the Akanu Ibiam Airport in Enugu to international status. This, they said, would assure the people of the zone that the two airports are really international airports worthy of such appeltation.
The South east is also angry that the federal government has paid scant attention to the ecological problems in the zone, as well as the much politicised construction of the second Niger Bridge.
There is also the issue of reactivating the Enugu coal mines, the exploration of crude oil and gas deposits in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu states and the reactivation of the Enugu depot of the NNPC which has been comatose for years. The people bemoan the fact that the national resources discovered in the zone is classified as strategic national reserves. While the people of the area continue to suffer undue neglect.
From the look of things, it does not bear repeating that Ndigbo has been short-changed in all facets of governance, especially at the federal level. Nigeria was founded on a tripod-Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba– but recent developments clearly indicate that Ndigbo are trailing behind the other two in the scheme of things. Even now that the country is divided into six geo-political zones, the South east has only five states, while the others have either six or seven. Again, the entire South east zone can only boast of 95 local government areas out of a total of 774 LGAs in the federation, while Kano and Katsina in the North West zone alone have 78 local government areas.
Pricked by the open cries of the South east governors, the Jonathan administration last week offered a symbolic tokenism: the appointment of Mrs Rose Uzoma, an Igbo, as new Comptroller-General of Immigration; she replaces another Igbo, Chukwurah Udeh who recently retired as C-G of Immigration.
Nonetheless, the nagging poser insists: How and when will the malevolent injustices against Ndigbo be squarely addressed?