Former
Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on New Media, Reno Omokri
on Tuesday made a case for Buhari over the president’s alleged lopsided
appointments saying appointments should be made on merit and not sectional
interests.
Omokiri made
the statement in his article titled As Buhari blazes the trail for merit.
Read his
full article
Recently
there was a big uproar about the appointments made by President Buhari. I
disagreed with those who complained that the President’s appointment were
lopsided.
Appointments
should not be made on the basis of ethnicity, region or religion.Appointments
should be made strictly on merit!
As far as I
am concerned, the President can appoint all his appointees from the same state
as long as they are the best Nigeria has to offer.
In 2013,
Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations. That victory was only possible because
we selected our best players.
A large
proportion of the squad were from the Southeast and Southsouth including
Vincent Enyeama, Austin Ejide, Chigozie Agbim, Joseph Yobo, Elderson Echiejile,
Kenneth Omuero, Efe Ambrose, Azubuike Egwuekwe, Godfrey Oboabona, Mikel
Obi, Reuben Gabriel, Nosa Igiebor, Obiora Nwankwo, Brown Ideye, Ogenyi Onazi,
while Ejike Uzoenyi, Victor Moses, Ikechukwu Uche, Sunday Mba and Emmanuel Emenike.
Nobody
complained that this squad was lopsided because we knew these were our best and
if we wanted to win we had to present our best. At the end of the day they
brought home the cup and that was all that mattered.
In the same
vein, nobody should complain about where Buhari’s appointees come from. What we
should insist on is that they are appointed on the basis of merit and that at
the end of 2019 they must bring home the cup by giving Nigerians good
governance that will yield tangible democracy dividends.
Nigerians
are always quick to say the problem with Nigeria is corruption, but I am not so
sure it is.
Corruption
is a symptom of the problem but it in itself is not the problem.
Corruption
is the catarrh coming out of Nigeria’s nose. If you experience catarrh you do
not treat it by merely cleaning your nose. The discharge will just keep coming
because you are treating the symptom not the cause.
The way to
treat catarrh is by treating its root cause which is the common cold.
What is the
common cold that is causing the discharge of mucous from Nigerians nose?
In my humble
opinion, it is quota system and the principle of federal character.
Federal
character and quota system are the root cause of corruption in Nigeria.
As long as
ethnicity is the yardstick for admitting children into schools or recruiting
adults into the civil service, we will never have a merit driven system
and where we do not have a merit driven system, the end result will be
corruption.
President
Muhammadu Buhari means well in his anti corruption battle, but if a civil
servant has to report to someone who is less qualified than him and who only
got his position because of quota system or federal character, his morale would
be low and he will not be committed and when opportunity presents itself to be
corrupt, that civil servant will seize it and he will not feel sorry or guilty.
As long as
there is no level playing field in Nigeria, none of our anti corruption efforts
will work. We will merely be cleaning rye discharge of mucous from our nose.
There cannot be a successful anti corruption war in the midst of social
injustice.
Nigerians
are not by nature correct. It is the Nigerian system that is by nature corrupt.
The other
day the Federal Ministry of Education released cut off marks for unity schools
and the cut off Mark for one state is 138 out of 200 while the cut off mark for
another state is 4 out of 200.
This is not
a joke! This is a reality in modern day Nigeria in the year 2015 and I kid you
not!
Right there
and then Nigeria has planted the seed of corruption in the heart of the child
from the 138/200 state and the seed of entitlement in the heart of the child
from the 4/200 state.
Any system
that is not built on merit cannot but be corrupt. It is a fact of life and
those who do not like this inconvenient truth can get as angry as they like
with me and people like me, but that will not change the truth.
Whether we
like to say it or not or whether we choose to pretend it does not exist, the
truth remains that so many groups in Nigeria feel alienated by quota system and
federal character.
We have
grand plans as a nation of being amongst the top 20 biggest economies of the
world by 2020, but which of the countries amongst the current top 20 economies
has a system like ours?
The answer
is none.
The G 7
nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the
United States along with their partner nations of China and Russia are
constantly competing with each other in the areas of early childhood to high
school education.
If the
educational pass rates of children in America is slipping when compared to that
of other nations in the G-7, it will become a major electoral issue.
The
influential Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) releases a regular triennial study of global education systems and
these nations keenly compete to outdo each other in these rankings.
Now, how can
Nigeria expect to join their ranks and compete internationally when we do not
even allow fair competition domestically?
Are we going
to write a letter to the G-7 or the OECD telling them that is not fair to
expect us to compete with them and ask them to lower the standards for us?
I don’t
think so!
Merit is the
way. No, I take that back. Merit is the ONLY way. And I thank God that we have
a President with the foresight to base his appointments solely on merit.
That is a
beginning, now we must ensure that merit is also applied to admission into
government schools and recruitments into the public service.
No comments:
Post a Comment