According to Punch, there was an outrage in the ruling All Progressives Congress on Thursday over the announcement of new appointments by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Leaders of the APC, who spoke to The Punch, complained that the appointments tilted in favour of the North and said the party must move fast to cope with the backlash of expected rumblings in the polity.
“The President does not consult before making most of these appointments and I can tell you that Nigerians are going to term the party and the President as a northern party and the President of Northern Nigeria,” a leader of the party said to one of Punch correspondents late on Tuesday.
Buhari, according to a statement by his Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, on Thursday approved the appointment of Babachir David Lawal from Adamawa State as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
He also named Mr. Abba Kyari from Borno state as his Chief of Staff.
Other appointments approved by the President, according to the statement, are those of Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retd.) as the new Comptroller-General, Nigerian Customs Service; Mr. Kure Martin Abeshi, Comptroller-General, Nigerian Immigration Service; Senator Ita Enang, Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters (Senate); and Suleiman Kawu as SSA on National Assembly Matters (House of Representatives).
Both Ali and Kawu are from Kano State and Abeshi is from Nasarawa. Enang from Akwa Ibom State is the only one from the south geo-political zone.
Adesina said all the appointments would take immediate effect.
Three top national officers of the APC, who spoke with one of The Punch correspondents on condition of anonymity shortly after the announcements were made, wondered why the President was appointing only northerners to positions to the detriment of the southerners.
They said that the President was already giving the party a bad name among Nigerians. They said they had hoped that he would learn from the criticisms that trailed his first appointments where more northerners were appointed into sensitive positions than southerners.
Before the latest appointments, the President had also named only one southerner among the initial nine appointments he made. (Punch)