Chief John Nnia Nwodo, President General of apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo says that the group is not expecting any major appointments from President Muhammadu Buhari for the South East geopolitical zone.
Nwodo accused the Buhari administration of marginalising the region in its first term, saying Ohanaeze is not expecting a radical departure from the trend in the second tenure.
In an interview published by Sunday Sun, the Ohanaeze leader added that the actions and inactions of the present administration have shown that it does not care about the geopolitical zone.
Nwodo said:
Regarding your question about expectations, I think if you listened to me during the campaigns , I said that he that is down needs fear no fall.
This government has clearly marginalized the Southeast. In his first tenure, he has shown us that we are not part of this federation.
I had to plead with the president to visit the Southeast when I visited him with our governors. He had been in office for 2½ years before he considered it necessary to come to the Southeast and it was the only state visit he made to the Southeast.
His other visits were during the campaigns when he used the opportunity to commission the Zik Museulum which was started by Minister of Works, Anenih under Obasanjo.
You know; so, I don’t really think he cares about this place, we don’t care for him so long as he doesn’t care for us. I couldn’t be bothered if he gives us no appointment whatsoever because in his previous tenure it was obvious that he was giving us the leftovers .
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No Igbo man was considered to head any of the security arms of the country, not even the Road Safety Corps or Civil Defence, not to talk about the Army, Navy or Air force ;not even Customs ,Immigration, Minister of Defence or Minster of Internal Affairs, and for the first time in the history of this country, appointments to these positions became a function of where you came from and how the president considers you personally loyal to him, rather than loyalty to the country, or your competence and seniority in the job.
We had two deputy Inspectors-General of Police from our area retired because their junior was appointed, when they had no query in their long period of service.
Their service was terminated on purely ethnic ground in order to choose somebody by the president. The president of our country swore to a constitution which requires him to be fair to all concerned .In order words, literally he is supposed to be father of the nation, but the president tells us everyday that he is more of a father to a particular part of the country .Look at the reshuffle in NNPC.
This is a company that runs a natural resource domiciled in the South; the South-south, Southeast and Southwest .That is where you have our oil resources, but its headship since his tenure , all the positions have been derived from the North, and out of eight appointments he made, five are from the North.
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What else can you use to show his bias? He is brazenly tribalistic and to that extent, I have no expectation from his appointments. I have none whatsoever.
“What is very baffling is why the southerners who support him are so docile and unable to vocalize their dissatisfaction with what he is doing.”