New Telegraph

Presidency: Next IGP’ll be appointed on merit, not ethnicity

…says poor corruption rating, verdict on Nigerians, not Buhari

 

The Presidency, yesterday, dismissed the clamour by some individuals and pressure groups for the next Inspec-  tor-General of Police (IGP) to be appointed from the South-East geopolitical zone of the country.

 

The incumbent Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Adamu, was due for retirement yesterday after attaining 60 years of age.

 

It is uncertain if Adamu’s tenure would be renewed. There have been speculations that a number of top ranking police officers were waiting in the wings to take over from Adamu who hails from Nasarawa State.

 

One of the permutations has been that President Muhammadu Buhari might seize the opportunity to placate the South-East region, which has consistently complained of exclusion from appointments into security high commands in

 

the country. However, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu has ruled out the possibility of such considerations. Shehu who was a guest on Sunrise Daily, a Current Affairs programme on Channels Television, said the President will appoint the next police boss based on merit and not on extraneous factors such as ethnicity or religion.

 

“If you are going to appoint the service chiefs from every ethnic group in this country, you are going to have more than 250 Inspectors- General of Police, 250 Chiefs of Army Staff, 250 Chiefs of Naval Staff. It’s not going to work like that. And they have their own systems of producing leadership. “If we say we are going to use ethnicity or region as the basis, then we have lost it.

 

This is about law and order; it is not about ethnic identity. This country finished with tribalism in the 1960s, why are we back to it now?

 

“But if you have two, three positions – look at what happened with the service chiefs just appointed. Two from the South, two from the North. If you are talking about religion, two Muslims, two Christians. So what do you want again?

 

“The President will rather have an Inspector- General of Police who will make you and I safer, protect lives and property than one who is more pronounced by his tribal marks,” he said.

 

Shehu, who also commented on the recent report of Transparency International, said that President Buhari was not to blame for the low ranking of Nigeria in the 2020 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) report, but rather Nigerians should take the blame for the negative portrayals the country got in the said report.

 

The global anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, had, in its latest report released last week, ranked Nigeria at 149 out of 180 countries. Nigeria, the report said, scored 25 out of 100 points to clinch the unenviable position of the second most corrupt country in West Africa.

 

The report sparked a chain of reactions and altercations between the government and its officials on one hands and members of the opposition and civil society on the other. Shehu, who joined the fray, chided critics of the administration for celebrating the report as the failure of Buhari and the anti-corruption fight in Nigeria.

 

He said the uproar that greeted the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2020 report was uncalled for as it was not an indictment on Buhari as a person, but on Nigeria and Nigerians.

 

He disputed the report and its findings, arguing that the parameters used in reaching conclusions were faulty. “We want to be complemented for the things we are doing well. As a government, it’s not for us to stop them from releasing reports. “But based on the parameters used, Transparency International’s report is not a judgement on (President) Buhari or his administration. It is a judgement on Nigerians. “The two (parameters) they dwelled on are essentially Nigerian problems.

 

They are talking about the political culture of this country. “Is it Buhari that is a thug? We are not doing thuggery. And then they talked about the justice project; perceived corruption in the judiciary.

 

These perceptions are essentially not correct,” he said. Shehu acknowledged that though the Buhari administration was yet to eradicate corruption from the polity, so many steps have been taken and many more actions, including judicial reforms were ongoing in furtherance of the antigraft war.

 

He lamented that the report failed to acknowledge the areas where the government had made progress but only highlighted the shortcomings.

 

“We responded because the report turned a blind eye on where we did extremely well. Before we came, corruption was part of daily life and it was never denounced. But now, with increasing education and awareness,

 

Nigerians are coming to accept that corruption is wrong and not the way to go,” he said.

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