Former aviation minister, Osita Chidoka, has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, of flaunting the federal character principle over the past eight years.
Chidoka pointed out that during the period under review, eighteen paramilitary agencies were headed by people from a particular region of the country.
The former minister made this known while speaking on ChannelsTV’s programme, Sunday Politics.
“I was in this country for the past eight years when the principle was brutally violated. I came on this programme, I spoke about the federal character commission. I spoke about our paramilitary agencies, eighteen of them, at that time, were headed by people from one particular region of the country,” Chidoka said.
“So, I find it objectionable for people who didn’t say a word when this country was brutally harangued by the government to now talk about issues of appointment and sensitivity in four weeks. I feel that it is a violation of the canon of decency. So what we need to see is that at the end of the day, the PDP plotted a zonal structure that works for it.“
Chidoka hailed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for its sensitivity to the federal character principle and even distribution of appointments while it was in power.
“For us in PDP, the first six positions are the president, the vice president, the Senate President, the speaker, the chairman of the party and the SGF. Those are the six positions we normally give to the six geopolitical zones. I want to see how the APC will do that,” he said.
“Then I am waiting to see how they will do the ministries in Nigeria, whether they will grade them in terms of their effectiveness in governance. For the PDP, there were grade A, grade B, and grade C ministries. Each of the geopolitical zones got one each from the grades; by so doing, the PDP ensured there was a sense of inclusion in the country.”
