BUHARI HAS BEEN FAIR, EQUITABLE IN APPOINTMENTS- BMO

The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has debunked insinuations that President Muhammadu Buhari is a sectional leader while advising Nigerians to be wary of fake news merchants and mischievous individuals and groups.

It said in a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, that the President has been taking deliberate and necessary steps to achieve regional and ethnic balance in his appointments since 2015.

“We are surprised that a respectable Nigerian of the calibre of the former military administrator of the old Kaduna state, Colonel Dangiwa Umar (Rtd)could fall for the antics of purveyors of fake news bent on painting the President bad.

“These slimy characters are the same people who were part of a scheme cooked up by a British firm Cambridge Analytical, which was confirmed to have been paid £2m by an unnamed billionaire sympathetic to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the run-up to the 2015 Presidential election to, among other things, present the then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari as a sectional leader. 

“Of course that move failed and even after the election, Nigerians saw how opposition elements readily made unverified claims about political appointments, aside from pushing the rest of the Cambridge Analytical game plan which included questioning the President’s educational credentials. 

“We want to refer Nigerians to an investigative piece by an online publication, ‘The Interview’ on all political appointments in the first term of the Buhari administration, which exposed the lies that the North was favoured to the detriment of the South.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the piece which focused on all political appointees including heads of parastatals and Presidential aides showed that the North had a 51% share of appointments in MDAs to the South’s 49% while 52.4% of Presidential aides were from the South compared to 47.6% from the North,” the statement added.

BMO noted that just like in his first term in office, President Buhari would also be guided by the principles of equity and fairness in his appointments this time.

“It is just one year into the administration’s second term and just like what they did back then, the conflict entrepreneurs are back stoking the embers of disunity just to dent the image of the President.

“Is it difficult for them to know that appointments are never made in one fell swoop? We also want to remind them that there is the Federal Character Commission which ensures equity in Federal appointments. 

“Only recently, a group of people under the umbrella of PANDEF accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of ceding about 70% of the top 40 jobs to Northerners, but NNPC later pushed back by showing evidence that 21 of them are from Southern Nigeria.

“These are the type of views that regularly fuel the wrong perception that Colonel Umar fell for and unfortunately allowed himself to be conned by those who delight in sharing fake news about the Buhari administration, out of malice.

“It is, however, gratifying that a section of the media has published excerpts from an official document that indeed showed that the South, right now, has 54.2% of appointees (103) while the North has produced 45.8%.

“What we want Nigerians to know is that appointments are a continuous exercise and as such there might be a perception of the so-called favouritism, depending on what time and at what point one chooses to take a look at the graph.

“Our message, however, is that this government is responsible enough to do a periodic review and make necessary efforts to balance the appointments whenever the need arises”.

BMO consequently urged Nigerians, especially opinion moulders like the retired Army Colonel, to be wary of those bent on exacerbating the nation’s fault lines with divisive claims and antics.