YORUBA socio-cultural group Afenifere has lashed out at the recent lopsided appointments in the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs in which all of the security parastatals are of northern extraction.
Earlier n the week, internal affairs minister Lt General Abdulrahman Dambazzau announced the appointment of a new controller-general of the Nigeria Prisons Service and the comptroller-general of the Nigerian Immigration Service. Afenifere has attacked the appointments as going against the spirit of one nation and federal character.
Apart from the fact that the ministers of defence and interior are from northern Nigeria, other security chiefs who are also northerners include the chief of army staff, chief of air staff, the comptroller-general of the Nigerian Customs Service, the director-general of the State Security Service, the National Security Adviser and the commandant-general of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps. Afenifere spokesman Yinka Odumakin, warned that concentrating the headship of all key security outfits in a section of the country was not healthy for the nation.
Mr Odumakin said: “The placing of the entire security architecture of a multi-ethnic country in the hands of a section of it is quite unhealthy and insensitive. You need an inclusive approach to security and wider perspectives from every section of the country.
"When you narrow your top brass to only an ethnic group you have lost a great deal of your capacity to take decisions in the overall interest of the entire country. It is not an accident that the security forces have looked the other way as Fulani herdsmen are ravaging the south and the Middle Belt as all those who should act properly view the whole crisis within the same prism as the herdsmen."
He added that when you create unease in other ethnic groups in a volatile polity like this with such height of impunity. Other socio-cultural groups representing other ethnic groups have also criticised the appointments.
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