WHAT is close to hell has been let loose since the announcements by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) that they would be relocating some offices to Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria.
The CBN announced on January 14 that it would be moving some departments to Lagos, while FAAN made public its decision on January 18. Both offices based their decisions on operational reasons, with the Federal Government coming to further explain days after through the Special Adviser Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, that the decision had nothing to do with the suspicion that the Federal Capital Territory was being tactically moved to Abuja.
Senator Ali Ndume, Senate Chief Whip, who had earlier served as Senate Majority Leader for part of the 8th Senate, emerged the agent provocateur when he granted an interview to Channels Television, where he threatened “political consequences” for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu if he sticks to that decision.
The vehemence of Ndume’s submission should not come to many as a surprise. He has always been known as controversial. He was a good friend of Senator Bukola Saraki, who supported the latter’s bid for the Senate Presidency in 2015. That was against the trend of opinion in his party, the All Progressives Congress(APC). Not long after, he fell out with Saraki and was eventually replaced by Senator Ahmed Lawan, who later emerged as the Senate President of the 9th National Assembly.
Again, in the build-up to the election of Senate presiding officers of the 10th Assembly last June, Ndume was a key campaign manager of Senator Godswill Akpabio, the party’s preferred candidate for the top job. He shared the limelight with Akpabio when he emerged as the Senate President and was accordingly named the Senate Chief Whip of the red chamber.
Not long after, he fell out with Akpabio and was almost suspended by the Senate when he had an open altercation with the Senate President in the chamber. Senate sources on the day had said that Ndume missed suspension by a fine thread and that some experienced lawmakers saved the day for him.
Ndume also openly supported President Tinubu in the build-up to the 2023 elections, and now that he had cause to fall out with the President, he has done so in line with his usual character.
While the position of Ndume may not have come as a surprise to many, the vehemence of his threat and the politicisation of an operational issue that affects FAAN and CBN by mainly forces from the North should worry many Nigerians.
Looking at the results of the election that brought President Tinubu to office, many analysts would think that Nigeria was able to overcome some electoral stereotypes and that a united country might be emerging after all. That Tinubu, a South Westerner was able to win elections in the North West ahead of a Northerner (Atiku Abubakar) was a big win for the country’s unity. Though it had happened to former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the start of this Republic, he was seen as a “Northern candidate” at the time. The victory of an indigenous South Western politician (so to say), against a candidate from the North was therefore seen as an improvement on the geo-location voting patterns of the past.
But the way Ndume, the Northern Senators’ Forum, Arewa Consultative Forum, and Katsina Elders Forum, among others, have taken the development makes it look as if a full-scale war had erupted between the Northern and the Southern flanks of Nigeria.
I do not see any reason for bad blood being generated against the government of President Tinubu on account of the administrative decisions. First, FAAN headquarters was in Lagos and was only moved to Abuja during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for no justifiable reason.
What can justify the relocation of the headquarters of FAAN to Abuja would be an empirical shift in the aviation hubs of the nation. As far as Lagos remains the hub of the aviation business, there is no justification for anyone to relocate FAAN headquarters to Abuja.
The mentality that Abuja being the federal capital of Nigeria must house every institution of government is a misnomer. It is not economically viable thinking and I can’t picture which part of the world that thinking came from.
Plenty of nations of the world are replete with two or more capitals. In the case of Nigeria, there is Abuja as the political capital, and Lagos as the commercial capital. Even the blind can see that Lagos is the economic capital of Nigeria.
Already, many have questioned the decision to centralise the seat of government even Abuja. If the entire FCT is supposed to be the capital of Nigeria, does it make sense to have a federal secretariat instead of locating offices of the MDAs in different parts of the territory?
So what should stop the operation of some offices of the CBN and the headquarters of FAAN in the nation’s commercial capital, especially when it would not cost the nation any fresh funds to build offices? I really can’t understand the logic of the Northern Elders, the Northern Senators, and other such commentators. We can excuse the position of the Katsina Elders as borne out of parochial thinking that the decision of their kinsman-former Minister, should be left unchanged, but that’s an obvious foul on national interest.
As I interrogated the matter, I was told that there is more than meet the eye on the issue. It was gathered that some Northern interests have “packed” their candidates into the CBN and FAAN under the guise of some shady employment schemes in recent years.
At least one Senator was said to have submitted more than ten names for employment into the CBN during one of those schemes. Now those secretly employed, many of whom have not shown any competence, with many of them parading questionable certificates from Benin Republic, Togo, and other African universities are going to face real tests when they relocate to Lagos.
One must, however, thank the former Governor of CBN, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, for rising above petty sentiments when he said last week that he supports the relocation of some CBN offices for operational reasons.
Sanusi said that the move makes sense, adding: “In my mind what I would have done was to move FSS and most of Operations to Lagos such that the two Deputy Governors would be largely operating out of Lagos or, even if they were more in Abuja, the bulk of their operational staff would be in Lagos.
“Economic policy, Corporate services, and all the departments reporting to the Governor directly such as Strategy, Audit, Risk management, Governors’ office, etc would remain in Abuja.
“It makes eminent strategic sense. And I would have done this if I had stayed.”
Let anyone advocating against it come up with positions devoid of ethnic sentiments and political colorations. Because it is a decision that is sound in economic sense, ethnicity and politics should not come near.
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