OPINION: “Has President Tinubu Marginalised Other Ethnic Groups To Favour Yorubas?” – Reno Omokri

Reno Omokri courts another controversy by defending President Tinubu, disputing the view that the president is favoring his Yoruba ethnic group over others in Nigeria’s multiethnic country. The opinion piece ignites discussions on Nigerian politics, leadership, and representation. After reading this, Critics and supporters will likely clash with equal passion, highlighting the nation’s ongoing struggle for unity and equality.

Recently, some disgruntled politicians, principally failed Presidential candidates, have sponsored a spate of articles trying to paint the Tinubu administration as tribalistic and lopsided in favor of the Lukumi Yoruba people of the Southwest.

In their desperate attempts to provoke a military coup, which is their ultimate goal, these elements have carefully and manipulatively curated all the positions occupied by persons of Southwest origin without balancing those held by persons from other geopolitical zones to paint a picture that does not exist.

It is just as the British philosopher and politician George Canning said, “I can prove anything by statistics except the truth“.

But let us focus on what cannot lie. Let us face facts.

We will begin with the military, paramilitary, and security services.

In addition to the Ministry of Defence, Nigeria has a total of twenty security and law enforcement agencies, including the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Airforce, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Police Force, the Department of State Security, the Nigerian Intelligence Agency, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Nigerian Immigration Service, the Nigerian Customs Service, the Nigerian Correctional Service ( formerly known as the Nigerian Prison Service), the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Federal Road Safety Commission, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, the Federal Fire Service and the National Youth Service Corp, which unknown to most Nigerians is a reserve force that can be called up during emergencies.

The question is this: Of these twenty security and law enforcement agencies, how many are headed by persons of Lukumi Yoruba origin from the Southwest? The answer is only five: the Nigerian Army, the Police, Customs, the DSS, and the EFCC.

Their sponsored missive included the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Kemi Nandap. But though she is Yoruba, her husband is from Plateau. According to the Federal Character Commission Establishment Act of 2010, she has a choice between choosing her father’s state or her husband’s state as her state of origin, and she was appointed based on Plateau being her husband’s state.

So, are these failed Presidential candidates and their agents telling Nigeria that by appointment, on merit, I might add, of just five persons of Southwest origin, President Tinubu is favoring the Lukumi Yorubas and creating a hegemony in our security services? Five out of twenty?

If that is their argument, what would they say about the immediate past regime of President Muhammadu Buhari, where the leaders of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, as well as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the President, the heads of the Defence Ministry, Attorney General of the Federation, Army, Police, NSA, DSS, NIA, DMI, DIA, NPS, NCS, NIS and EFCC, were all simultaneously Northern Muslim men?

Or what would they say about Peter Obi, who appointed Igbo Christian males to head his campaign in Sokoto, Bauchi, and Lagos States?

The fact remains that under President Tinubu, our defense architecture is balanced, which is why, for the first time in eight years, we have a member from the Southeast as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla.

Now, let us move on to ministers.

No matter how sectional they are, it is constitutionally impossible for any President to disregard the Federal Character Commission Act because, constitutionally, they must appoint a minister from every state.

In their desperation to smear the President, these paid vuvuzelas lied that the Southwest has eleven Ministers. That is not true. In arriving at that fallacious number, they counted the President himself as the Minister of Petroleum and the Minister from Kwara.

But even considering their duplicitous mathematics, the number is still not eleven.

Even worse, in trying to project their lies, these paid writers failed to inform their readers that the North of Nigeria has the bulk of Ministers in the present cabinet, including what may be referred to as the most prized ministries, including both Ministers in the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Agriculture and Police Affairs Ministry.

The truth is that Nigeria is being reformed. Next month, for the first time since Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi abrogated true federalism in Nigeria with his Unification of Assets Decree Number 34 on May 24, 1966, Local Governments will receive their funding directly due to the Tinubu administration’s judicial victory at the Supreme Court on Thursday, July 11, 2024, which granted autonomy to that tier of government.

Such reforms, and others like the removal of oil receipts from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and handing it to the Central Bank of Nigeria, as well as the removal of fuel subsidy, which has stripped fuel importers and cross-border smugglers of their illicit source of income, has created powerful enemies for the Tinubu administration. These carpet baggers will stop at nothing to try to incite an illegal and undemocratic regime change.

They tried it with the failed Days of Rage protests when they went to military barracks to recruit soldiers and flooded some parts of Nigeria with foreign flags.

Now that those false flag antics have failed, their next antic is to gaslight Nigerians about so-called Yoruba dominance. A dominance that only exists in their jaundiced imaginations and machinations.

The opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily align with the views of JolibaLive News! or any of its staff members. The author is in no way associated with this online news blog.

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