Banditry: Tinubu and northern appointees, by Abu Shekara
That Northern Nigeria, especially the North-West has, for the past nine years, been left at the mercy of terrorists is bad enough, the effrontery is the excuses and buck passing that’s coming out of certain quarters in the country on the issue.
The promoted narrative is that a substantial number of President Tinubu’s cabinet portfolios on defence are held by Northerners from the most terrorism ravaged zone; Ministers of Defence Mohammed Badaru, Jigawa and Bello Matawalle, Zamfara and Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, Sokoto.
This commentary is part of the ploy by elements in certain quarters to absolve the Federal Government and by extension, the President, of blame for the failure to effectively deal with the scourge that’s claiming thousands of lives and displacing hundreds of communities in a substantial part of the North, the rational being that it’s Northerners themselves that lack the will to solve the problem for their own people.
The implication of this thinking is that these appointees are assigned the defence portfolios and placed in command, specifically in order to address the security problem of the part of the country they come from. And since the challenge still persists, their people should hold them solely responsible because their boss, the President has fulfilled his obligation by the singular act of appointing them.
That has the impact of suggesting that the official responsibility of public servants in Nigeria is to address the needs of their own part of the country. The Minister of Health for instance, should only be concerned about providing healthcare to the people of his own part of the country, while that of agriculture should focus on empowering farmers in his geopolitical zone.
This similarly means that petroleum products should be more available and perhaps cheaper in the South-West, since Bola Tinubu is the Minister for Petroleum Resources, failing which that part of the country should blame him, not because he’s the leader of the Nigerian government but because he’s let them down as a son of the soil.
This rationale is both ridiculous and mediocre. For it is the President that’s responsible to Nigerians, not his appointees. It’s him that’s elected on the basis of promises he’s made to the citizens, his aides are merely his chosen tools to enable him fulfill that mandate.
The President has therefore, the sole power to hire and fire, as he deems necessary towards discharging his responsibilities. Thus, such efforts to deflect reproach from him to his aides, whenever he fails to deliver on his obligations to any section of the country are misguided and an assault on the intelligence of citizens, especially the direct victims of such failure.
President Tinubu is the Commander-in-Chief, he calls the shots, issues the directive and gives the command. On the issue of banditry, protecting the lives of citizens in all parts of Nigeria is the ultimate duty of the President, not his appointees, irrespective of which part of the country they come from.
Abu Shekara, a veteran journalist, writes from Sokoto.
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Proofreading by Gift Luckson, Editor at Neptune Prime.
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