President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been accused of nepotism following the concentration of most of his recent appointments in the South West and Lagos State in particular.
Daniel Bwala, the spokesperson of the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign council for the 2023 general election made the accusation while speaking on Channels TV Politics Today.
He claimed that Tinubu had beaten ex-president, Muhammadu Buhari, in nepotism.
Buhari was accused of making most of his appointments from the northern part of the country while in office, but Bwala said in the case of Tinubu, only a section of the southern part of the country was getting attention.
Bwala, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), stressed that the president had ignored the South South and South East in his appointments so far.
He said: “APC as a political party is a party that commenced the idea of nepotism. Remember when President Buhari was in power, people complained about nepotism…but he’s like iPhone 13 Promax.
“By the time President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over, his own even exceeded iPhone 14 and went straight to iPhone 15 Promax in the sense that his appointments have generated a conversation around the country that the government is being concentrated in one part of the country over and above others.
“In the case of Buhari, you could argue that he favoured the North…but you could see that it is populated by Northeast, Northwest, and North Central. There was a democratic distribution of appointments there but when it comes to this present government, if you look at it, the Southeast and the South-south are left behind.
“The dominance of the appointments is in the Southwest. And even when you go further in the Southwest, there are quite a number of people in the South west who will tell you that the appointments were concentrated in Lagos.”
He argued that the constitution stated that the country should not be run in a way that would reflect the dominance of one part over the other, stressing that Tinubu is breaking the law.
The former member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said the president may not be able to enjoy loyalty from all sections of the country, following his obvious disregard for other parts of Nigeria.
It’s too early – APC
Reacting, a member of the ruling APC, Aliyu Audu, who was also featured on the programme, said criticisms of the government should be constructive.
He argued that it was too early to accuse the president of nepotism, stressing that there were more appointments to be made.
While pointing out that the concerns have been noted, he assured that President Tinubu would not leave any part of the country behind.
“We should critic our own, we should praise our own but we should understand where to draw the line. We should always have an objective, we should not critic just for the sake of criticism, we shouldn’t critic for the sake of causing disaffection among Nigerians,” he said.
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