EXPRESSO_Umbrage>> By Steve Osuji
lGBO MARGINALISATION: Tinubu’s Igbo Hate Continues With The Fall Of Dr Anite-Uzoka
The unstated policy of keeping Igbo outside the gate of President Bola Tinubu’s government continues to manifest everyday. The policy seems to say: exclude Igbo and keep them out!
The latest casualty is the cerebral Dr Doris Anite-Uzoka. She has just been downgraded from her perch as Minister of State for Finance and moved down the corridor to Budget and National Planning also as Minister of State.
She was replaced by Taiwo Oladele from Ondo State.
Now the Minister of Finance (the most important ministry) is Yoruba and so is his deputy. No other president ever exhibited this level of crass tribalism! Not even the military rulers!
There was always intentional attempts at ethnic mix and inclusion in every ministry until APC seized power 2015. Today, Tinubu is taking inequity to a new low.
At inception in May 2023, Dr Doris from Imo State was made Minister of Commerce and Industry, but in November 2024, she was downgraded to a sub-Minister under Finance. She has been further downgraded to Budget and Planning only yesterday.
IMO HAS NO SUBSTANTIVE FEDERAL MINISTER: Imo State which is supposedly the most active APC state has no senior minister therefore has no showing during the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meetings.
Yet Governor Hope Uzodinma is APC’s henchman in the entire southeast (or so he pretends to be?).
Uzodinma is the chairman of the APC governors (Progressive Governors Forum) as well as chairman of all sorts of phoney Renewed Hope boondoggling. Gov. Hope probably spends a quarter of Imo State resources on some hoary APC doings, working more out of Abuja than Owerri.
Yet as you read this, he has no minister sitting on the front row in the FEC meeting since Tinubu came to power.
It’s therefore a case of a governor exerting himself fruitlessly before a president who probably dislikes him and hardly notices him.
It’s a case of Hope Uzodinma burning huge chunks of Imo funds on APC projects without being acknowledged – a fool and his money being separated, and mocked!
Before Uzodinma’s eyes, his minister in the token Ministry of Women Affairs was ignominiously sacked last year. We speak of the effervescent Mrs Uju Kennedy Ohanenye whose short spell at the helm was at once transformative and disruptive. They didn’t like her guts; they chucked her!
If you thought the Igbo/Imo slot would be replaced accordingly, you must be suffering acute naiveté. Mrs Ohanenye’s position was handed to another ethnic group.
The same way Dr Doris’ substantive position in Commerce and Industry was handed to yet another Yoruba.
TRAUMATISING NDIGBO: Apart from openly excluding Igbo from governance, President Tinubu and his kitchen cabinet who are hounding Ndigbo are insensitive to the trauma they cause the appointees and their family members as they are tossed about like worthless dried leaves. Nobody also cares about the psychological effects of exclusion on the people of the Southeast generally. Some of our grown children would often ask us: ” Daddy why are Igbo people being treated like this since Buhari’s era to Tinubu’s rule today. It’s as if Igbo are not part of Nigeria.”
Of course we don’t have answers to these kinds of questions from our children! We cannot prove to them that we are not in a Yoruba Republic!
YORUBA REPUBLIC FINANCE INCORPORATED: Today, nearly the entire federal finance and economic backbone of Nigeria is completely manned and dominated by a certain Yoruba ethnic clique; to the extent that foreigners having financial transactions with Nigeria today would think Nigeria is a Yorubaland.
Every facet of Nigeria’s finance and economic outlet is locked down by Yoruba under Tinubu.
From the finance ministry to the CBN, NNPC, NIMASA, Customs, FIRS
Immigration, Accountant General, Bureau of Statistics, CJN, IGP, CoAS, AGF, Min. of Justice, Digital Economy, Blue Economy, Solid Minerals, you name it; ad nausaeum!
The Nigeria civil war was fought because of the fear of Igbo domination. This is worse than domination, this is total capture of Nigeria by the southwest.
From this outing, those who said Nigeria’s tribalism started in Yorubaland may be right after all. The reason is that most of the enlightened people don’t seem to be worried about this shameful bigotry and displacement of other ethnic groups.
They seem to shun the commonsense of inclusion in a diverse geo-polity. They seem to carry on as if Nigeria will end after Tinubu’s regime. Is it possible that the Southwest of Nigeria is planning to after Tinubu’s reign?
YORUBA REPUBLIC HOUSE OF CORRUPTION: Just like in the case of tribal bigotry, there’s also a common myth that the Yoruba stock are more adept at finagling with public treasury and finance than any other ethnic group. It seems they are being proved right!
It has been looting galore since Tinubu became President in 2023! I see a picture of brigands, pirates and bandits carting away the commonwealth with uncommon frenzy and haste.
The culmination of it all is the mess Nigeria’s federal budget has become since Tinubu’s presidency.
All of a sudden, Nigeria cannot produce and manage her annual budgets anymore.
Of course, the budget miasma witnessed in the House of Representative a few days ago must have caused Dr Doris’ ouster.
Where has the money gone? N1.5 trillion, a tranche of the capital budget disappeared! Mr Olawale Edun, Finance Minister, where is the money? The House Committee on Appropriations asked him.
He deflected to his assistant: she makes the disbursements, he said. This of course suggests two things: he is either an absentee minister or he doesn’t quite understand the job, or both. This column thinks both. But the poor lady had to be the fall guy.
Manifesting here is another much touted trait of Yoruba: in most organisations, they prefer to be entrenched in the finance and procurement departments. They are believed to often hollow out organisations and quietly move on. Other people would usually suffer or carry the can. This is probably what has happened to Dr Doris. We pray that this is not currently happening to Nigeria! Would Nigeria be left a hollow shell after Tinubu?
MINISTER WALE EDUN SHOULD HAVE BEEN REPLACED, NOT HIS ASSISTANT: This column had warned from the outset that Mr Edun was not the proper fit for the huge job of Finance Minister. Edun is a mere bean-counter and file-pusher. We remember him as the backroom cruncher in the IBTC (Investment Banking and Trust Company) partnership that berthed the rave investment bank of the 1990s. Then he had advanced to becoming a carpetbagger and “fund-manage” for the president since he served as Commissioner for Finance under Governor Tinubu in Lagos (1999-2004).
Mr Edun would count among the poorest Finance Ministers of Nigeria. Charismatic only as a sheep, he has espoused no known policy direction or reform objective since he took office. Edun is not just the Finance Minister, but also the Coordinating Minister of the Economy (CME). This means he commands oversight authority over the economy. Say, does this economy look like someone is in charge? He provides neither vision nor insight; neither drive nor direction…
Mid 2024, when Nigeria’s economic headwinds were going haywire, an exasperated President Tinubu hurriedly assembled a so-called Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC) led by Aliko Dangote. If the CME was in charge, there would never be a need for a PECC!
If Edun has failed in the elementary task of managing his annual budgets since 2024, no doubt, he would never be able to understand the bigger picture.
Mr. Edun is the reason Nigeria’s economy has no head or tail today!
BOTTOMLINE: President Tinubu needs to urgently remove Edun and appointment in merit, someone to head the economic team. First, the president needs someone he would respect his opinion not Edun who’s always been his bag carrier.
The job of an economy team lead is certainly beyond the ken of Edun and the current team members, including the new boy on the block, Taiwo Oladele.
Meanwhile, let it be known that openly discriminating against Igbo will always not augur well for Nigeria generally.
