Fayose Calls Buhari a Sectional Leader over Appointment of INEC Chairman
Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has described the appointment of yet another northerner, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, as the Chairman the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a vindication of his position that “President Muhammadu Buhari is a sectional leader, who sees himself mainly as leader of the Hausa/Fulani, and not that of the entire people of Nigeria.”
The governor, who said he had expected that the new INEC chairman will be chosen from one of the three Southern geo-political zones, especially the South-western part of the country being the only zone yet to produce chairman of the nation’s electoral umpire, posited that: “Nigeria has entered a one -chance bus and it remains to be seen who will save the country from its sectional president.”
Reacting to the appointment of Yakubu as the new INEC chairman, Fayose said in a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka that even the Yoruba leaders who promoted and made the Buhari’s presidency possible had been short-changed.
The governor, according to NAN, asked: “Shouldn’t he have considered someone from either South-east, South-south or South-west as chairman of the electoral commission now that we have a president from the North?
“For reasons of perception, equity and fairness, don’t we have credible people from the Southern part of Nigeria that can conduct credible elections as INEC chairman? Or do we assume that the 2019 elections have already been won and lost by the appointment of this Hausa/Fulani professor as INEC chairman? Or isn’t it regrettable that even in 2015, it is only in PDP controlled states that elections are being upturned?”
He said he was worried that the three arms of government - the executive, legislature and judiciary - are headed by northerners, leaving the three zones in the southern part of the country with nothing.
Speaking further, Fayose said: “When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was the president, he never appointed a Yoruba man as INEC chairman. Dr Goodluck Jonathan too did not appoint an Ijaw man as INEC chairman.
“Former President, Shehu Shagari, too did not appoint a Hausa man like himself as chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), rather, he appointed late Justice Victor Ovie Whisky.
“During the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha regimes, no Hausa/Fulani man was appointed as chairman of the National Electoral Commission of Nigeria and General Abdulsalami Abubakar who established the current INEC did not also appoint his fellow Hausa man as chairman.
“How then can we have a president from the North and at the same time have INEC chairman from the Hausa/ Fulani northern Nigeria?
“Obviously, what is being witnessed is more like a situation where it appears the president is more interested, in having someone malleable to him than serving the interest of Nigeria and its people.”