In less than two weeks, America’s new President, Joe Biden, has appointed more qualified Southern Nigerians to senior positions in his government th
Biden kicked off the spree of appointments by appointing 39-year-old wonderkind, Adewale Adeyemo, to the cabinet-level of Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. This is the highest level appointment of any Nigerian in the world. Adeyemo now has influence over more funds than the Nigerian President. Alas, if he were to have been based in Nigeria, perhaps Buhari would have made him his PA on photography like he did the Igbo race!
Biden has also appointed Osaremen Okolo, another Nigerian American, as his health policy adviser on COVID-19 response.
Not done, President Biden, appointed Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo as his White House Counsel. She now becomes the hand that moves the hand that moves America. Can you beat that?
And just when we thought he had used the hat-trick to dazzle Nigerians into falling in love with him, he pulled another rabbit out of his generous hat. He named yet another Nigerian, Enoh Titilayo Ebong, the acting director of the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).
It is almost certain that none of the Nigerians appointed by Joe Biden would have found their way into President Buhari’s cabinet. How could they? They are neither Fulani enough, nor Northern enough, nor Muslim enough. Buhari’s nepotism makes Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema look like a learner.
Buhari could learn a thing or two from Joe Biden. I mean, never in our democratic history have we had a situation where the heads of the three arms of government, Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary are Northern Muslim Males. This is a zero-sum game taken to the extreme!
Why are the Executive, Legislature, Judiciary, Ministry of Defence, Army, Navy, Police, NSA, DSS, NIA, DMI, DIA, NPS, NCS, NIS, and EFCC all Northern Muslim men? This is against the Federal Character Act. And yet, Buhari’s presidency complains at their abysmal corruption perception ranking by Transparency International? Of course, Transparency International is aware that nepotism is also corruption.
Buhari’s nepotism as a military ruler in Nigeria led to the unique situation where both he and his Vice President (Chief of Staff Supreme Military Headquarters) were Northern Muslim males of Fulani heritage (Idiagbon was part Fulani). That regime was so nepotistic that they kicked-started Nigeria’s first brain drain in 1984, and today, Buhari has not changed, or learned anything since then!
His nepotism has so divided Nigeria that I wonder if we can ever recover from the curse of Buhari as a nation. Even his wife cannot stand him. She checked out, like Andrew, to Dubai. Buhari has created Nnamdi Kanu in the East and Sunday Igboho in the West. This government came to steal, kill and destroy.
Because of the Gestapo-like control of the media that the Buhari government has put in place, many Nigerians do not yet know the destructive impact that his nepotism has inflicted on Nigeria. But think about this. Boko Haram kills Nigerians, and Buhari rehabilitates them. Yet, he wants to arrest Sunday Igboho that is protecting Nigerians!
Another example of the devastation that Buhari’s nepotism has wreaked in Nigeria is in our finances. The current minister of finances lacks both the academic and professional qualifications to function in that office adequately. And what has been the consequence?
Nigeria’s foreign debt increased from $7 billion in 2015 to $32 billion in 2020, with little to show for it. Buhari has borrowed more than Abacha, Abdulsalami, Obasanjo, Yar’adua and Jonathan, combined. Where has the money gone? Much of it into private pockets.
I mean, what is Nigeria’s business with constructing roads in Niger and building railways to their cities when we have not done that in Nigeria? And to cap it all, these constructions are being paid for by loans that Nigeria will repay.
I will counsel those Nigerians in President Biden’s cabinet to speak into the ears of their boss, because if they do not act and act soon, they may not have a home to return to after they must have been done serving the United States Government.
Nigeria cannot survive another two and a half years of Buhari’s misrule. We are a resilient people, but we are still human, and that is why people like Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu are rising to fill the void in leadership that has been created in Nigeria.
Besides Buhari’s nepotism and misrule, there are too many non-state actors with arms in Nigeria. On Tuesday, February 2, 2021, respected Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi went to Katsina on a peace mission. Whilst there, he met an estimated 500 armed bandits. He appealed to them to tow the path of peace, and I commend him.
But imagine that. 500 heavily armed men. And they are outlaws. They are non-state actors. And this is just one state. And yet, Buhari has mounted more roadblocks per square mile in the Southeast of Nigeria, than exists in war-torn Syria. And this is a region of Nigeria that does not have even a fraction of these armed bandits.
How is it just that these armed bandits have not been declared to be terrorists, but the Indigenous People of Biafra, who are not as much a threat to life and security as these herdsmen and bandits are? The answer is because they share an ethnic and religious affinity with Buhari, while IPOB does not.
The men of Nigeria’s armed forces who should be saving the lives of innocent Nigerians being tormented by these bandits and herdsmen in the Northwest are instead sent by Buhari to dominate and terrorise Southern Nigerians.
And why is Buhari doing this? Let us allow Buhari to speak for himself.
Speaking at the United States Institute of Peace on July 22, 2015, in response to a question on whether he intended to treat those who did not vote for him fairly, the newly-elected Buhari said:
“I hope you have a copy of the election results. The constituents, for example, gave me 97% [of the vote] cannot, in all honesty, be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me 5%.”
That Freudian slip is the philosophy behind the extreme nepotism that has driven Buhari’s actions in government since May 29, 2015.
Reno Omokri, a former presidential aide, Omokri is an author and host of Transformation with Reno Omokri, a Christian teaching TV show broadcast on San Francisco’s KTLN and Detroit’s Impact Network. He is the founder of a multimedia project, Build Up Nigeria, and has produced a series of short films in the U.S.
