Kayode Agbabiaka

Appointments in the outgoing administration of President Goodluck Jonathan administration were influenced to tilt to a part of the country by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation

As was gathered by this magazine last week, the recent directive by President Goodluck Jonathan to all ministries, departments and agencies, MDAs to submit handover reports, ahead of the May 29 inauguration of the president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari has elicited palpable fear among top echelons of the various agencies in the public sector. The apprehension has been accentuated by the gale of sacks and appointments of chief executives for federal government parastatals and agencies by President Jonathan who, going by events last week, seemed determined to exercise the power of his office till his last day in the office.

•President Goodluck Jonathan: Confronted with allegations of marginalisation of South West

Concerned about the gale of new appointments, the All Progressive Congress, APC raised the alarm last week that the outgoing government is bent on foisting fait accompli on it. But the APC concerns were dismissed by the presidency with the argument that the victory of the opposition party in the 2015 general elections does not translate into cessation of governance or the Jonathan administration. In essence, the presidency insisted that President Jonathan will continue to exercise his power to appoint and remove from office till 29, May, his last day in office. The onus, it implies is then on the new President to review the appointments after he assumes office on 29 May. According to analysts, if the Buhari administration decides to go this route, it will not just review recent appointments made by President Jonathan, but also all those made since the administration was elected into office. Such appointments, they argued, will have to be reviewed in terms of their compliance with federal character principle and fairness to every part of the country. Of particular focus were the appointments made with the advice of Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, President Jonathan’s Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF.

•Anyim Pius Anyim, Accused of tribalism

His Emergence

Anyim, was Senate President under Obasanjo from 2000 to 2003. His appointment as SGF followed his nomination for the position by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-political organization in the country. President Jonathan had asked the organization to nominate someone for the position on his election into office in 2011 following the zoning of the position to the South East, according to a sharing formula for appointment into top political offices designed by his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Jonathan had chosen Anyim who was said to have the backing of the five governors of the South east from a list, which included the likes of former Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe among others.

•Ojo Maduekwe: Lost the SGF post to Anyim

Sources claimed Anyim was chosen ahead of Maduekwe, who enjoyed the backing of former President Olusegun Obasanjo because Jonathan put his foot down and insisted on a non-controversial loyalist for the post. The former Senate President had fallen out with Obasanjo during his tenure as the chairman of the National Assembly and the two have had a cat and mouse-like relationship since then. Speaking during the swearing in of the new SGF along with his first set of ministers some weeks after he assumed office in 2011, the President said the then 50-year-old was chosen after a careful selection process based on “his record of public service, his career as a senator, his role as the President of the Senate and his leadership skills that our nation needs at this time.” The President further noted that Anyim is to coordinate government policies, ministries, extra-ministerial departments and agencies including the Cabinet Office.

SGF’s Role In Government

Statutorily, the responsibilities of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, OSGF, include coordinating policy design and formulation by Ministries, Departments and Agencies for approval by Government; serving as Secretary to the Council of State, the Federal Executive Council and other Constitutional Councils, which are chaired by the President, coordinating activities of Ministries and Government Agencies on the implementation of Government decisions, policies and programmes and coordinating the appointments to Headship of Statutory Bodies, Commissions and Agencies by the President among others. The Office also performed supervisory roles over federal government parastatals and agencies. Nigerians first got the inklings of the powers the Jonathan presidency was willing to invest the office of the SGF with after the swearing in of his first set of ministers.

The President had after the swearing in told journalists and others present at the occasion that it will be the responsibility of the SGF to announce the portfolio attached to each of the new ministers. The presidency continued with this practice until last year. In addition, Anyim was also given wide powers to recommend either fresh appointments or renewal of tenure of heads and boards of federal government agencies and parastatals by President Jonathan.

Accusation of Nepotism

But barely few months in office, the former Senate President was confronted with different allegations of nepotism and violation of federal character principles in carrying out his assignment. There was the allegation that in recommending individuals for appointments as chief executive of federal parastatals and agencies, Anyim favoured those from his part of the country- the South East, ditching fairness to every part of the country that should normally guide such appointments as enshrined in the federal character principles for cronyism.

•Bolanle Gbonigi: Also complained against marginalisation of the Yoruba

Various socio-cultural and political groups have complained of what they termed the hijacking of the Jonathan administration by the South East with the preponderance of new appointments going to the area. Yoruba leaders, under the aegis of Yoruba Unity Forum, YUF led by Chief H.I.D. Awolowo had, through Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi in February 2013 in Ibadan presented a fact sheet entitled “Partial documentation of evidence of Yoruba marginalisation in President Jonathan’s administration” to prove that the Yoruba had been discriminated against in appointments into political seats, government agencies and parastatals. Chief Olu Falae, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation who was also part of the press conference noted that in the 36 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) identified, which substantially control the economic and financial direction of the country, only three, that is eight per cent, are headed by Yoruba. They noted that a fourth Yoruba person heading one of the agencies, Dr. Bola Onagoruwa was ceremoniously dismissed as the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises in 2012.

•Olu Falae: Complained against marginalisation of the Yoruba

The Forum also noted in the fact sheet that of the 11 officers who control the judiciary and the anti-corruption agencies, there is no Yoruba person on the list; of the 17 educational management positions, only two are occupied by Yoruba; of the 10 widely-recognised positions dealing with National Security, only one is occupied by the “marginalised group. According to the former SGF, there is “no Yoruba in the current list of 12 topmost positions that constitute the apex of the political power hierarchy in the country and the Yoruba in the service are being constantly subjected to humiliating sacks and postings because they have no one at the top of the hierarchy to plead their cause.”

According to them, the President’s pattern of appointments with no consideration for the Yoruba suggested that Jonathan did not appreciate the contribution the Yoruba people made to his emergence as the president in the 2011 general election.The Forum made reference to the sacking of eight general managers of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, six of whom were Yoruba, by the former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, in October 2012. The Northern region through the Arewa Consultative Forum had also at about the same time complained about marginalization in terms of appointments into federal agencies and parastatals.

•Stella Oduah: Sacked eight GMS from FAAN, six of whom were Yoruba

Self Defence

The Jonathan administration had moved in to swiftly dispel the insinuations in its early years in office. President Jonathan who has also come under severe criticisms over allegations of marginalization of different parts of the country in terms of appointments directed Anyim to look into the grievances by compiling data on existing and outstanding appointments. Consequently, the SGF, during the mid-term review, presented what he called comprehensive data of federal appointments on state basis with a conclusion that the imbalance in federal appointments had been corrected. In the mid-term review of the performance of the Jonathan administration on 29 May 2013, Anyim said that the complaints of poor representation of many states concerning appointments were not misplaced.

But he added that the situation arose from the violation of provisions of the Federal Character Act by the administration that preceded Jonathan’s. He added that the administration of President Jonathan was working to correct the inherited imbalance and indicated that his home state of Ebonyi has also been poorly treated in terms of allocation of federal appointments.

As contained in the document presented by Anyim then, of the 550 top federal appointees, Delta has the highest number with 27 slots, followed by Kogi with 26 slots. Other states at the top of the table include Adamawa (20), Anambra (25), Edo (23), Imo (20), Kaduna (21), Kano (20), Katsina (21) Kwara (22), Ogun (22), and Osun (24). The table presented by Anyim also showed that Abia has 16, Akwa Ibom has 12, Bauchi (14), Bayelsa (17), Benue (19), Borno (14), Cross River (11), Ekiti (10), Enugu (13), Gombe (13), Kebbi (14), Nasarawa (10), and Niger (11).

Also, Ondo has 14 slots, Oyo (10), Plateau (12) and Rivers (16). States at the bottom of the ladder in terms of federal appointments, according to the SGF are: Ebonyi (6), FCT (4), Jigawa (9), Lagos (8), Sokoto (7), Taraba (6), Yobe (9) and Zamfara (5). “Consequently, the latest appointments to major federal positions have been carefully carried out to correct outstanding imbalances. This has not been easy and has led to delays in filling certain vacant positions as efforts are made to weigh the balance in such decisions. Our efforts in the last two years have yielded some result but much is yet to be achieved,” the SGF said of efforts being made to tackle the problem.

Critics Insist On Marginalisation

But if his aim was to stop the agitation for a more nationalistic approach to allocation of appointments, Anyim failed as different groups wasted no time in faulting his assertions. Anyim was accused of presenting false and incomplete data of federal appointments in an attempt to hide the alleged Igbo’s increasing domination of strategic sectors of the administration. For instance, the SGF was accused of excluding some important appointments, including his own as well as that of the office of the coordinating minister for the economy held by an Igbo woman from Delta as well as other influential offices within the presidency in his computations.

The assertions by Anyim was queried by no less a person that Dr. Goke Adegoroye who has been described as one of the best permanent secretaries in the Federal Civil Service. In his analysis of the data presented by the SGF, Adegorye who is now the chairman of Governance and Sustainable Development Initiatives, GSDI Limited, was to later undertake a content analysis of the SGF data. Adegoroye, who has since retired from the federal service, was also unequivocal in his conclusion that the data from the SGF was a misrepresentation of the true state of federal appointments according to the zones.

While faulting the claims of the SGF, Adegoroye noted that the data as compiled by the SGF was marred by duplication and wrong listing of appointees. The former Permanent Secretary pointed out that the total number of appointees involved in the SGF analysis was not 551 but 545, as four appointees, namely: Director-General, National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), Alhaji Yusuf Usman Abdallah (Kano); Executive Secretary, Nigeria Press Council, Mr. Adebayo Atoyebi (Kwara); Conservator General of the National Parks, Alhaji Abubakar H. Tanko (Niger), and Medical Director, Federal Medical Centre, Gusau, Dr. Kabir M. Anka (Zamfara), had their names and designations repeated.

He also noted that Professor Chinedu Nebo from Enugu State, already appointed Minister of Power, was still listed as Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, while Rivers State, which the Summary indicates as having 16 political appointees, instead has 15. Other flaws he identified in the data of appointees as compiled by the SGF include lumping of career-based appointments with political appointments, according the same status to heads of departments within an agency and their chief executive officers (CEOs] and grave omission of agencies like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). What was listed were only the Group Managing Director and the Governor, respectively.

Adegoroye noted that none of the six Group Executive Directors of the NNPC or the four Deputy Governors of the CBN was listed while the subsidiary companies of the NNPC were also missing. He also noted that there was no regard for the weight of appointment i.e, the weight of responsibility, the power and influence of an appointive position. This, he noted led to an absurd situation in which the CBN Governor and the Executive Director (Services) of the Benin-Owena River Basin Authority were taken as individual and equal appointments.

Also, the former SGF noted that the SGF failed to include ministerial/adviser appointments and appointments arising from electoral processes like ministerial/SGF/HCSF/special adviser positions and the politically shared principal offices positions in the National Assembly (President of the Senate, Speaker of the House, Deputy President of the Senate, Deputy Speaker, Senate Leader and House Leader) in his analysis.

He then dissected the full national data on federal appointments and after attributing weight to each of the offices, the former permanent secretary posited that “in terms of effective total appointments, a measure of the weight of political appointments – per million populations, the figures were: South-South (52), South-East (52), North-Central (47), North-East (36), South-West (28) and North-West (28).” Earlier, there was an outcry over what some described as a preponderance of people from the South east and South-south zones as heads of agencies and parastatals in the financial and economic sectors of the country.

A document titled “Strategic Public Sector Finance/Economy Leaders, March 2014” circulated to the media early last year indicated that out of 26 appointees, 14 heads of strategic agencies all hail from the Ibo-speaking South-East zone, three from South-south, three from South-west(SW), three from North-central(NC), two from North-west (NW) and one from the North-east(NE). It was noted in the document that apart from Prof. Nwanze Okidegbe, the chief economic adviser to the President, heads of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, Nigeria Stock Exchange, Securities and Exchange Commission, Assets Management Company of Nigeria, Investment and Securities Tribunal, National Pension Commission(PENCOM), Bureau of Public Procurement, Debt Management Office, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission; National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission and Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority are all indigenes of the SE.

In the same vein, the SS heads the Budget Office, CBN while the SW hold offices of the National Insurance Commission, Accountant-General and Infrastructure Bank. The NC has the Auditor-General, Nigerian Export/Import Bank and Bank of Agricuture; the NW with Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation while the NE has only the Federal Mortgage Bank.

And rather than inherited as implied by Anyim, analysts have argued that the dominant position was achieved because when a Northerner or somebody from the South west had cause to vacate a position through retirement, death or any other cause, most replacement nominees would immediately come from the SS or the SE. The SGF particularly provoked outrage in the South West in May 2013 when he unceremoniously engineered the sack of the Director–General, Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, NTDC, Otunba Olusegun Runsewe and the Director- General, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Mr Yomi Bolarinwa in one weekend.

The two were immediately replaced by two Igbos, Ms Sally Mbanefo for the NTDC while Emeka Mba, who had spent eight years as head of the National Film and Video Censors Board was asked to take charge at the NBC. Before they were booted out, Runsewe and Bolarinwa still had about one and a half years each remaining of their terms. No reason was given for the removal of the two men. The removal of Runsewe who stakeholders in the tourism industry believed had acquitted himself well as the DG of NTDC caught many Nigerians by surprise.

•Olusegun Runsewe: Sacked

Worse still, Runsewe was removed while on official assignment in Dubai selling the tourism potential of Nigeria. Runsewe had carved a niche for Nigeria locally and internationally in the tourism sector with such initiatives as the floating of the Nigerian Tourism Village during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. While it was believed that the sack of the former NTDC DG may have been part of attempts by the Jonathan administration to weed out those he believed are loyalists of former President Obasanjo from his government, the President was said to have been deceived to give Runsewe the boot.

This magazine gathered that the President was lied to by the Office of the SGF that there was a vacancy for an Executive Director (ED) in NTDC, falsely implying that the ED will work under Runsewe. Also sacked at the same period was Dr. Oluwole Oluleye, who was barely one year in office as the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Development Technology Fund. On the other hand, Bolarinwa was allegedly removed because a section of the country believed that the South-West has had enough of its days in NBC. “The SGF, Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, should remember that people are watching him. He should know that it is this kind of prebandal politics that destroyed the first republic. That he is being accused of using his office to promote ethnic agenda by replacing Yoruba in government with his kinsmen is unhealthy for our country and democracy,” Yinka Odumakin, spokesperson of Afenifere had said then in response to the gale of retrenchments.

•Sally Mbanefo: Replaced Runsewe

Sources who spoke to this magazine said the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation is promoting the violation of the Federal Character principle by ensuring that favourite candidates are recommended for consideration to Mr. President for approval, especially for agencies and departments of government considered lucrative.

There were allegations that the SGF did this through delays in taking action on the issues of Directors-General and Executive Secretaries that have completed their first tenure in office and whose terms are due for renewal. Honourable Mustapha Bala Dawaki a member of the House of Representatives representing Dawakin Kudu/Warawa Federal Constituency of Kano State was at loggerheads with the SGF last year over accusations that Anyim has perfected ways of delaying renewal of tenure or confirmation of chief executives of parastatals who are of Northern origin with the ultimate aim of either substituting the names with that of his favourite candidates or delaying the process of the confirmation by not forwarding the name to the President.

This, he said was in spite of the fact the supervising ministers of those agencies may have recommended the renewal of the tenure of the chief executive. The legislator backed up his claims with different instances. He pointed to the case of one Dr. Mohammed Haruna, an indigene of Nassarawa State who was nominated for appointment as the Director-General of National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI, by the then Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Okon Bassey Ewa being the most senior director in the agency and the Director of Engineering.

He noted that the Minister confirmed that he had since August, 2012 sent a recommendation letter, attached with the examination and interview results, for the DG’s confirmation through the OSGF. According to him, the results indicated that Dr. Haruna scored 74.5 per cent; Professor Nnamdi Ekere scored 64 per cent while Professor Onyewuchi Oguoma scored 62 per cent and 70 per cent was the pass mark set by the interview panel.

But Dr. Haruna allegedly remained in acting capacity for over a year as the government failed to confirm his appointment despite several reminders from the Minister. Others that were going through the same situation as at the time, as pointed out by the legislator were Dr. Ghaji Bello of the Infrastructure Concessionary Regulatory Commission ICRC; Musa Maiyaki of the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA and Dr. Abdulraham Sambo of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS. He added that other executives secretaries of Northern origin were instructed to hand over after serving for one term to the most senior directors in their agencies. He identified those in the list to include Professor Mahmoud Yakubu of the Tertiary Institutions Education Trust Fund (TetFund), Dr. Ahmad Modibbo of the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) and Muttaqa Rabe Darma of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) among others.

In contrast, critics pointed out that the SGF was swift in renewing the tenures of chief executives of agencies like the Debt Management Office, the Security and Exchange Commission and the Federal Road Safety Commission among others which have his fellow Igbos as heads. This magazine’s findings also revealed that the northern part of the country is still sore about the failure of government to approve the appointment of Alhaji Kabiru Mashi as the Executive Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS.

Mashi was appointed Acting Executive Chairman of FIRS in April, 2012 and his appointment was not confirmed until he was sacked about two months ago. The process of appointment of a new chairman for FIRS was mired in controversies following the decision of Federal Ministry of Finance on September 2012 to engage a consultancy firm, Philips Consulting to handle the process. The consultancy firm went ahead to place advertisements in major local and international publications for the purpose. Many observers, including top officers of the Federal Ministry of Finance, had raised the alarm that it was illegal to have appointed consultants to handle the selection process when FIRS (Establishment) Act, 2007 clearly stipulated that the appointment of the Executive Chairman of the FIRS was the sole responsibility of the President subject to the confirmation of the Senate.

Nevertheless, the Ministry and the Consultant continued with the process of the selection of the new FIRS Chairman with applications for the job received from Nigerians living at home and abroad. And just as the process of selection was gathering momentum, Max Ogar, an Abuja based lawyer had asked the court to declare the process of selection of new chairman for FIRS initiated by Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi-Okonjo Iweala illegal with the argument that it was the exclusive function of the President to make such appointments. The legal practitioner anchored his argument on Section 3(2)(a) of Federal Inland Revenue Act, 2007 which, according to him, vests the President with the Authority to appoint any person of his choice into the office.

He noted that the President had in the last two years appointed chief executives for scores of Ministries, Departments and Agencies including critical ones like the NNPC, Nigeria Ports Authority, and Independent National Electoral Commission without advertisements and interviews. He also noted the same for FIRS executive chairmanship positions which have always been filled by presidential appointment with Senate confirmation in the past. Despite the legal challenge, the Ministry of Finance continued with the selection process.

But the process was eventually bogged down by controversies over allegations of favouritism and ethnic bias. About 30 applicants responded to the advertisement by the Ministry of Finance, including Mashi, the incumbent acting chairman. There were also allegations of ethnic bias against the Minister when it was realized that all the candidates shortlisted for the interview conducted on Sunday, 3 March were only from the South-East and South-South States. Some applicants from the other parts of the country claimed that though they have the qualifications stipulated in the advertisement, they were not shortlisted for the interview. This magazine learnt that Senator Makarfi, the Chairman of Senate Committee on Finance who was part of the selection process withdrew in anger over the non-inclusion of Mashi or any other candidate from the Northern part of the country among the candidates. Some leaders from the region had hoped that retaining Mashi or appointing someone from the region will be a first step in redressing the alleged imbalance.

Indeed, a coalition of Northern youths, led by Comrade Shehu Sani, a human rights activist and President of Civil Rights Congress had queried the rationale behind the appointment of a new Chairman for FIRS when Mashi was already in the position and improving the performance. The group had claimed that the engagement of consultants to handle the screening of applicants for the position of FIRS was a smokescreen already programmed to lead to the emergence of a favoured candidate.

•Shehu Sani: He and others questioned the rationale behind a new FIRs chairman

And even before the result of the interview was announced, there were speculations that the panel favoured Ms. Akpan as the successful candidate. This is in spite of the fact that the United Kingdom based banker is said not to have experience in taxation administration as required in the advertisement. While Mashi was considered not good enough to head an institution in which he has spent many years to climb the ladder to the top, the office of the SGF worked tooth and nail to ensure that Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, its preferred candidate was appointed the Director General of National Pension Commission, PENCOM.

The PENCOM Rule Bending Saga

Anohu-Amazu’s appointment as Acting DG of PENCOM in December 2012 was mired in controversies with the argument that she should have been retired in accordance with the tenure policy of the federal civil service having spent eight years as a director. But the controversies deepened when the President asked the National Assembly to ratify her appointment because contrary to the 20 years stipulation in the PENCOM Act, the nominee had only 15 years of experience.

However the Federal Government included a lowering of years of experience for appointment as director-general as part of its amendment to the PENCOM Act, thus making its preferred candidates to be qualified for appointments. Though the amendment met with stiff opposition in the National Assembly, the Federal Government however succeeded in getting it passed as the years of experience was lowered from 20 to 15 years, paving the way for the confirmation of Anohu Amazu in October last year.

•Chinelo Anohu-Amozu: Her appointment was mired in controversies

But Anyim was accused of tribalism with allegations that the Pension Reform (Amendment) Bill 2013 is also aimed at lowering the bar on years of experience for qualification for the Director-Generalship of the National Pension Commission, PenCom, from 20 years to 15 years to pave way for the appointment of the current Acting Director-General, DG, Mrs Chinelo Anohu-Amazu as the head of PenCom. Leaders of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP from the South-West had at a meeting with President Jonathan on June 2013 complained about favouritism by Anyim, in the distribution of federal appointments. In another document entitled “Anyim Pius Anyim, the de Facto President,” stakeholders across the South west complained that the SGF has continued to favour his ethnic group in appointments in theMDAs with over 70 per cent of appointments passing through the SGF’s office going to the Igbo.

They cited the instance of the aviation ministry where besides the minister, who is an Igbo, almost all the heads of the parastatals from the FAAN, NCAA, NAMA to the Aviation Technology, Zaria in Kaduna State, are Igbo. “The Director-General of the Nigerian Tourism Development commission has been replaced with an Igbo. At the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), the acting executive secretary, who is Igbo, is awaiting confirmation, while Anyim is trying to have a lady of the Igbo extraction as the PENCOM head, despite protests from even the National Assembly, based on the requirements for the office.

•Okonjo-Iweala: All appointments on merit

•Okonjo-Iweala: All appointments on merit

“We are all witnesses to what has transpired at the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) when Anyim and the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, tried to impose an Igbo, despite the presence of a northerner that should assume office there.We urge the president to take stock of all the appointments under Anyim’s office and publish for all Nigerians to see if all these claims are not true,” the group said. But while defending the appointments, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a paper she delivered in April 2013 at the Ola Ndi Igbo symposium that all appointments into most federal government’s establishments were strictly carried out on merit: “If you check on the internet there are articles saying that Okonjo-Iweala has gone ethnic but I believe in merit and competition and I don’t really care what part of the country you come from as long as you can do your job and that has always been my tenet…But by the way, when you think of merit and competition Igbos don’t do badly and that is a problem, we do rather well.” But President Jonathan was at various times confronted with allegations of marginalization of South west during his campaign for the 2015 elections by different stakeholders from the region. The stakeholders had lamented that despite the massive votes they gave the President in 2011, the region was marginalized in his government.

While acknowledging that the allegations were indeed true, the President had blamed the situation on the loss of the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which was zoned to the South-West, to the North-West at the beginning of his tenure. He added that this denied the region a strong voice who could have spoken for it when issues of appointments were being determined. It was learnt that following the complaints the President began to take serious interests in the distribution of appointments. The President had also earlier begun to make amends with the appointment of Brigadier General Jones Oladehinde Arogbofa (rtd) his new chief of staff in February 2014.

•Jone Oladehinde Arogbofa: Appointed by the President to appease South West

The appointment was regarded as a bold move by the President to appease the south-west that voted for him in 2011. Arogbofa, an indigene of Akoko South-west local government area of Ondo State is also a member of Afenifere. The President had also made a couple of appointments with the South West as beneficiaries in a couple of parastatals notably the FIRS, Bank of Industry, the PTDF as well as a couple of ministerial appointments. But the appointments made between last year and the March 2015 presidential elections seemed too little, too late as they were unable to reverse his popularity in the South West. Analysts said the eventual predicament of the President should serve as a lesson to the President elect to treat every part of the country with fairness in term of appointments.