*As President’s Political Adviser disagrees with The DEFENDER on Igbo support for IPOB
By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor
The Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, has given reasons why President Muhammadu Buhari will not hasten into the idea of removing the public service appointees who were appointed at the tail end of the last administration of People’ Democratic Party (PDP), before it was booted out of power by the elections of March 28, 2015.
Ojodu spoke in an exclusive interview withTheDEFENDER, in Abuja, on Tuesday, just as the President’s Special Assistant on Social Media, Ms Lauretta Onochie, was also captured giving similar position at a different fora same day in the nation’s capital city of Abuja.
Responding to a question on why the APC government is finding it difficult to sack inherited appointees described in the party circles as PDP in APC government and who are noted for their sabotage of the Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration, Senator Ojudu said although some of those who wanted the President might be right by the reasons they adduced but that the law guiding appointments of those public servants does not permit a law-abiding President Buhari to do so.
“Yes there are still elements of PDP within the system, who are exploiting the tolerance of President Muhammadu Buhari to cause disaffection. But the President believes that we are all Nigerians. He would give you a chance even when you are not a member of his party, he will allow to be. But the moment we now see that you are abusing that trust, or you are abusing that goodheartedness, then, something will have to be done and that is what the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Services, Col. Hameed Ali, was trying to point out.”
He however gave reason why, despite that the PDP appointees have abused the goodheartedness of the President by sabotaging his government, Ojudu stated the constraints behind why sacking them could not be an option on the Buhari’s table.
“Again, you cannot win in this circumstance? Like he (President) was telling us and he has said it at two forum now, one, he said, “Look, when I was military Head of State, I arrested people for corruption, I took them into the Kirikiri and I said they remained guilty until they can prove that they are innocent. Now, I am a civilian President, we are arresting people and we are saying they remain innocent until we can prove them guilty.”
“People are still not satisfied. This man is trying to re-act and trying to move far away from the label of the past whereby people say he is a dictator, he is dealing with people with iron hand and so on and so forth. He said, “Okay, fine, I won’t rule with iron hand this time around. I will allow all opinions to flower. Let democracy prevail.” There is an election to choose the leadership and he said, “Okay, I will allow that to go as it is wished by Senators themselves. People have been appointed into the positions of authority in the public service. There is a law guiding that appointment. They have tenure. Do I come and say okay get out of here, you are not member of my party?”
Ojudu however argued that, “Yes, past Presidents did (sack them upon assumption of office) but President Buhari says he will not do it this time around! Because if he starts doing that, you the media will also be the ones who will criticize him and say that he is not keeping to the law and that he is flaunting the Constitution of Nigeria. Most of those appointments were made by PDP government. Some of them just six months, one year before they left power and they have terms of service,” he said, adding that the President, going by his commitment to the rule of law, therefore, cannot interrupt with the terms of office of those PDP appointees in his government rather than place them under watch to ensure they do not cause irreparable damages to the government before they finish their terms and go.
The Presidential Adviser said further that, “Still, the President cannot remove them because they will go to court and the court will rule in their favour.”
Ojudu said no matter what, Mr. President would still insist that those appointees are “first and foremost Nigerians before they become members of political parties. If the law says you are appointed to be in power for four years and you are appointed just one year to the end of the previous government, so your term still runs into his own government. If now without you committing any crime, he now removes you and you go to the media, the media will come back to say, “This man is unjust. This man is unfair.” You will accuse him of inequity.
“So, the man said okay let them run their term and their term is over they can go. You see now that it is a no-win situation,” he said.
In the same vein, Tuesday, at the 2nd Annual International Conference of the Progressive Solidarity Forum, in collaboration with the National Orientation Agency, held at NAF Conference Centre, Abuja, Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Media, Ms Lauretta Onochie, said it would be difficult for Mr. President to remove overnight the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, who are serving in his government.
Stating this at the Abuja conference with the theme, ‘Focusing on institutions: A panacea for sustainable development’, Onochie acknowledged that more than 50 percent of PDP members were in the Buhari government serving in the presidency, judiciary and law enforcement agencies.
She said, “That brings me to those who are in this government to serve themselves. Those Col. Hammed Ali (Rtd), the CG Customs, called PDP. He said that there is about 50 percent of them in this government.
“But I say no they are more than 50 percent. They are everywhere. They are in the presidency, the national assembly. You can find them in the judiciary. They are in the law enforcement agency.
“They serve their personal interest. They encourage unsuspecting youths, our youths to be their foot soldiers on the social media to abuse and curse people while their own children are sipping tea in England or America or elsewhere. They are a poor example to our youngsters on the social media.
“You just don’t go and change all the agencies. That is not how it works. If you have to change the whole civil service, the whole police, the whole market women, you change the whole children in the school,” Onochie said.
In the meantime, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, has exonerated the leaders of the South East from blame for the excesses of Nnamdi Kanu, whose era is now fast fading out.
Ojudu said this in disagreement with an Editorial of The DEFENDER, which analyzed and posited, amidst the heat of Kanu’s threats to national security, that all that he was doing with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) would not have been possible if he did not enjoy the full support of governments, traditional rulers and political elites of the region who, the online newspaper alleged, were using Nigerian money to advance the course of Biafra as operated by IPOB and therefore called on President Buhari to move quickly and declare a state of emergency to punish any governor of the South East who thenceforth allowed his state for Nnamdi Kanu to cause trouble for Nigeria.
Ojudu quickly reacted, “I don’t think that Nnamdi Kanu enjoyed the full support of the governments and traditional rulers of the South East region. You need to talk to them because they were blackmailed by the cheer number of young employed youths that were following him ignorantly. And they were looking for how they could be dismantled by force and by the Federal Government.
“So, their (South East leaders) quest at a point wasn’t that they were supporting him and his IPOB but their quest was because they were afraid what those young people could turn out to be, which in some cases is reasonable. They are too loud and for individuals either as business men, traditional rulers, clergy men and all those of things, who do not have a means of protecting themselves, it would have sometimes been foolhardy for them to come out on the rooftop and condemn or try to stop the kind of thing Nnamdi Kanu was using the youths to do. So, they were discouraged to do so.
“But when the government perceived that the reasonable voices from the region were being trapped by the cacophony of those young people, it then moved and just kept soldiers to parade on the streets. And that was it. And it was just a matter of Python Dance and everybody began to dance away.”
*Look out for details of the Senator Babafemi Ojudu’s interview on thedefenderngr.com that is the news website of your widely read The DEFENDER.
