YNaija Editorial: Redefining Nigeria’s federal character

Every new set of appointments by President Buhari comes under growing scrutiny, with observers waiting to compare the number of Northern sounding names with the number of Southern sounding names.

The perception over the last one year is that the President has favoured the North in his appointments, and that is in fact the case. So far, 68% of federal appointments have gone to the three Northern zones.

Over the course of a Presidency, a few thousand of such appointments will be made, and given the initial small sample size (140 so far), there may not be much cause for alarm.

Federal Character is enshrined in Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution. Specifically, it says:

The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.

So far however, the expression of Nigeria’s federal character appears limited to what part of the country a person is from, but there are other sections of society yet to have significant representation in governance: women and youth.

Women make up just 15% of Buhari’s appointments so far, broadly in line with their representation in decision making capacities in various sectors of Nigerian society. 57 years and 4 republics later, Nigeria waits for its first female executive governor, and the presence of relatively more women in the Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet administration was in marked contrast to what came before, and has apparently been reversed.

Youth are even less well represented, especially if you define youth as being aged 18-30, even though 70% of Nigeria’s population is below that age. That is why initiatives like Not Too Young To Run, a proposed bill that seeks to remove age limits to contesting for various political offices, are a step in the right direction. Too often in Nigeria, ‘leaders of tomorrow’ become ‘leaders of next year’.

It is also why the appointment of Hadiza Bala-Usman as Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, is a pleasant surprise. She is 40 years old, female, and in charge of a major revenue generating agency that has for years punched below its weight. If her tenure is a success, it will further embolden those who want to see younger people given positions of real authority.

Irrespective of how she performs, it is a fact that Nigeria still has too small a space for its women and its youth in governance. Changing that can only be a good thing.

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