Professor Pat Utomi once said President Buhari could make all his political appointments from one village as long as those he brings in can get the job done.
“Let’s get serious. Let’s get to move this country forward and away from all this small, petty issues. To me, it is not an important issue and I don’t want to deal with it. The President can appoint everybody from one village. As long as the people can get the job done, let them get it done. That is what Nigerians wanted and that is what they voted for,” he told Daily Independent.
With respect to the good Professor, that was the point he missed then, and it is the point the APC has been missing for 10 years.
You govern the country you have, not the company you wish you were CEO of. Nigeria is not Ghana. We are not a homogenous village meeting where you can pick your cousins because they are competent. We are a country of competing nations whose interests must be accommodated, otherwise you don’t have a country – you have Iraq, you have Somalia, you have Yugoslavia.
No section of Nigeria has a monopoly of wisdom, probity, or competence. And the job will not get done if you start the job by creating resentment.
Buhari took Utomi literally. For eight years we ran an experiment in village governance. The heads of the Army, Police, DSS, NIA, NSCDC, Customs, Immigration, Prisons – one compass, one religion, one region. NNPC, FIRS, and the kitchen cabinet all speaking the same dialect. He provided intellectual cover for what the 1999 Constitution expressly forbids. Section 14(3) does not say appointments may reflect Federal Character. It says they must. You do not get Federal Character from Daura.
We thought we had seen the worst of sectionalism.
Then came Tinubu, who decided to outdo his predecessor with innovation. If Buhari breached the written convention of Federal Character, Tinubu breached the unwritten one that has kept this country from tipping over since 1993: religious balance at the very top.
For over 30 years, since Abiola-Kingibe taught us a brutal lesson, every serious ticket has observed the rule – a Muslim-Christian, Christian-Muslim balance. It wasn’t in the Constitution, but it was in the constitution of our peace.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket of 2023 didn’t just break that convention, it shattered it and then asked us to clap for its courage.
Yes, the administration tried to patch it afterwards. They gave us a Christian SGF in George Akume – a good man from Benue – and pointed to him as proof of balance. But you don’t cure a head wound with a bandage on the leg. The ticket is the ticket.
And this is where lack of diversity at the top stops being just symbolic and becomes dangerous: it creates an echo chamber.
Look at what just happened with the Catholic Bishops. On July 28th, a 19-member delegation of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), led by its President Archbishop Matthew Man-Oso Ndagoso of Kaduna and including Cardinal John Onaiyekan, did not go to Aso Rock to sing praise. They went with a documented account from parishes, IDP camps and markets – that insecurity has turned churches and farms into crime scenes, that reforms have not reached the people, that Christians are anxious about their place.
How did Aso Rock react? Not with listening, but with dismissal.
President Tinubu responded that the economy is performing well and INEC is neutral. The Presidency then went further to attack Cardinal Onaiyekan for speaking out, characterizing his honest disclosure that their concerns were rejected as a breach of confidentiality and an overreach of clerical privilege. In other words: how dare you tell Nigerians what we told you in private.
As Cardinal Onaiyekan himself said, Nigeria is bleeding, but the President’s account diverged sharply from reality because he only hears reassurances from those closest to him.
That is exactly what happens when you staff Aso Rock with sameness. When everyone around the table shares one faith and one political interest, you lose the ability to hear feedback from the other half of the country. The Bishops did not come for contracts. They came as moral witnesses, and were treated like an opposition party.
Prof. Utomi’s logic still fails on its own terms. Competence without legitimacy is useless. You cannot hire the best pilot in the world if half the passengers refuse to board the plane because they believe it will only land in your village – and you prove them right by ignoring the Bishops when they tell you the engine is on fire.
The outcome is as important as the route to the outcome.
