' Buhari Violating Federal Character In Appointments ' – Dep. Senate Pres. Ekweremadu

8 years ago

' Buhari Violating Federal Character In Appointments ' – Dep. Senate Pres. Ekweremadu

The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has declared that President Muhammadu Buhari has violated the provisions of the federal character as contained in Section 14 of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the appointments the President had made.

Ekweremadu, who spoke in a lecture at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University on Monday, argued that Buhari violated that section of the constitution in his initial appointments, contending that such appointments ought to reflect the diversity of the country.

He said the appointments “made so far by the current administration are clearly lop-sided that it left the South-East totally empty-handed”.

He added, “I think in this country that is just recovering from a most divisive and bitter fought presidential election in its history; in a country where vicious civil war had been fought and scars are fresh; in a country where a presidential election, believed to have been won by (someone from) a part of the country was annulled; in a country which has deteriorated from one that citizens held high political and civil service offices outside their places of origin to one in which they hardly do so any more; and indeed in a country where there has been consistent outbreaks of militancy and restiveness by people who believe they have been shortchanged, maltreated, and, therefore, better off outside the Nigerian commonwealth, I firmly believe from the depth of my heart and conscience that you do not even need a soothsayer or compulsion of the constitution to know that you must necessarily carry every part of the country along.”

In his lecture entitled, ‘The Politics of Constitution Review in the Multi-Ethnic Society’, organised by the Faculty of Law, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Ekweremadu said it had become imperative to review the nation’s constitution on grounds of ambiguity and failure to make provisions for some critical matters of state.

He noted that difficulties in amending the constitution were caused by mutual suspicion of the elite as “mutual ethno-sectional and religious suspicions have become so ingrained in our body polity that even the most patriotic and altruistic intentions are almost always interpreted from myopic prisms of such sentiments and interests”.

Nigeria’s former Ambassador to the United States, Prof. George Obiozor, said it would amount to fallacy for anybody to say that Nigeria’s unity was not negotiable, noting that Nigeria had failed to learn the lessons of history.

Obiozor stated, “The reality over the years remains that in spite of the best efforts of all our leaders past or present, Nigerian unity is not guaranteed. It is simply at best, an aspiration and not yet an achievement.”

The ex-envoy advised that if the country would realise its potential, it must stop “the syndrome of self- delusion about Nigerian historical exceptionality”.

“Today, if the truth must be told, our diversity has turned into disorder, and our democracy is an invitation to incremental anarchy,” Obiozor said.
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