Last Wednesday The Nation published a three-page news feature which talked about a “furore over federal appointments”. In his appointments of heads of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), President Umaru Yar’adua, the article said, has been in clear violation of the federal character principle.

            However, until the president’s recent appointment of Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from Kano State as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, The Nation said, there were only pockets of protests against Yar’adua’s appointments. Sanusi’s appointment, the newspaper claimed, has since “flung open the floodgates of protests”.

            I searched the article for evidence of the floodgates of protests and found only two; Senator Patrick Osakwe who spoke on behalf of the Southern Senators Forum and Yinka Odumakin, a spokesperson of the Afenifere Renewal Group, who wrote a companion piece for the main article.

            In an apparent effort to prove its case against Yar’adua, The Nation reproduced a modified version of a list that the Insider newsmagazine had published in its edition of June 29 as part of its cover story on what it purported to be recent postings of senior officers of the Nigerian Army as General Officers Commanding, Principal Staff Officers, Corps Commanders and other senior appointments.

            According to the list, 27 of the appointments were from the North, three from the East, one each from the West and Lagos and none from the South-South. The list also claimed that 24 of the officers were Muslims, five Christians and three of unknown religion.

            Without the slightest equivocation, one can say that even the most casual glance at the list should raise suspicions about its authenticity. First, it had three Commandants purportedly of Kano State origin whose postings were not specified. Second, the list had two names of dead officers from the North. Third, only those from Kano State where the current army chief comes from had their states of origin listed against their names. Consistency demanded that others on the list should have had not only their zones but their states of origin listed. Clearly there was mischief afoot.

            Where a casual glance of the list would merely raise suspicions about the authenticity of the list, a more thorough consideration of it would reveal a motive behind it that was dishonest, to say the least. First, although the authentic list of the postings as shown in the table below does confirm a wide ratio of 22 to 8 in favour of the North, it is not true that Muslims outnumber Christians by nearly five to one as the Insider claimed. As Table I below clearly establishes, in the nine years since our return to civilian rule in 1999, this year is the first in which Muslims (17) would outnumber Christians (13) in the top 30 senior officer cadre. From 1999 until this year Christians outnumbered Muslims on an average of ten to one. During President Obasanjo’s first year there were 28 Christians against only 2 Muslims. It was worse the following year.

            The huge regional gap in favour of the North is hard to defend, at least from the ordinary person’s point of view, but invariably, religion has been a more potent – and more destructive – tool of political control than region or tribe.

            In any case whereas it is hard to defend the huge regional gap in favour of the North in the latest army postings, it is instructive that the vociferous critics of the postings are completely silent on postings in the Air Force (where there are 16 Southerners to 14 Northerners) and in the Navy (where the ratio of 24 to 6 in favour of the South more than balances the wide gap in the army in favour of the North).

            Now, if there are wide gaps between the regions in the armed forces, the same cannot be claimed for political appointments in the civil sector as the Table II from the Federal Character Commission of the appointments of senior and junior ministers, and permanent secretaries clearly shows.

            The table shows the North has 7 more posts than the South out of a total of 85. However, an analysis of a table of the consolidated manpower statistics of ministries, departments and agencies published in the October/December 2008 edition of the Federal Character Monitor, a publication of the Federal Character Commission, shows clearly that out of 14 states that have exceeded the 3% limit of employees for each state set by the FCC, only Benue (4.2%) and Kogi (5.8%) are from the North. The remaining 12, Abia (4.1%), Delta (5.9%), Ogun (5%), Akwa Ibom (4.8%), Cross River (3.2%), Edo (5.6%), Enugu (3.5%), Imo (7.3%), Ondo (4.1%), Osun (4.0%) and Oyo (3.5%) are all from the South.

            In sharp contrast the entire North-West states of Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara have 7.5%, barely a shade higher than that of Imo alone.

            As any fair-minded person can see from these tables alone, it is not true that President Yar’adua has Northernized Nigeria. Some sections of it, yes, but certainly not the whole country. In all there are over 450 MDAs. To isolate less than 20 of them  headed by Northerners in order to prove a case of sectionalism against Yar’adua as many newspapers have done is not only unfair. It is downright dishonest.

            Some of these newspapers have rested their claims on the grounds that these are “choice” MDAs. According to a circular from the National Incomes, Salaries and Wages Commission signed by its Chairman, Chief F.O. Williams, there are about 83 such “choice” parastatals, 22 in the Special Category and 61 in Category A.

            If those claiming that Yar’adua has northernised the country are interested in doing an honest job of their claim they should have spread their samples beyond the 20 agencies they have focused on. If they do, they are likely to discover that there are as many, if not more, agencies headed by Southerners as there are those headed by Northerners.

Table I

Past COAS, GOC, PSOs, Commanders and other postings from 1999 – 2009

Table II

Distribution of Heads of Ministries and Permanent Secretaries by Zone