Narrow minded opportunists are trying to rubbish General Buhari's Pan-Nigerian mandate by giving the impression that he has a sectional agenda of Fulani hegemony. One of the opportunists in this regard is Dr. Bashir Gwandu who was fired from the NCC by President Jonathan in 2012 for gross insubordination and blackmail.
It will be recalled that Bashir Gwandu was brought into NCC in 2006 as a ready replacement for Mr. Ernest Ndukwe who was in his second and final term. But only one year into his tenure, his promoters thought the replacement could even be immediate and they piled strenuous but unconvincing arguments to sway the late President Musa Yar Adua to sack Ernest Ndukwe and replace him with Bashir Gwandu. President Yar Adua did not buy the maneuvers and one thing led to the other with the National Assembly wing of Gwandu's foot soldiers taking over the battle. It did not work however and Ernest Ndukwe survived.
In an interview in which Dr. Gwandu responded to a questionnaire from one newspaper and which he served to a few other dailies, two things stood out: Dr. Gwandu in his typed response wrote “National Communications Commission” when he meant to write “Nigerian Communications Commission” thus displaying a crass disconnect between himself and his job. Besides, Mr. Gwandu claimed he has never been smuggled into anything when asked about his second term appointment. That was untrue as there are records with government that he was smuggled into NCC.
A senior official who made input into Gwandu's file said the fellow was too childish to occupy the post which he held since 2006. In summary, Bashir Gwandu is a big insubordinate liar who lacks self-control and cannot be trusted with official secrets. As amply noted during the hearing of the suit he instituted against the NCC, he simply cannot work under any management not led by him.
Of recent, he has been sponsoring hate mails against NCC and its leadership, one of the mails alleges that NCC is a South-South and South-East empire which should be demolished and replaced with a Fulani leadership; it also makes wild allegations of fraud to give the impression that Gwandu was an anti-corruption crusader.
Gwandu has been boasting about his closeness to General Buhari and how he is going to exploit that position to get rid of Southern elements from NCC. To show how narrow-minded he is, he has drawn up a list which he circulates to the effect that no former head at the NCC has come from the north of Nigeria. This is not only diversionary and sectional, it whips up the very nepotistic sentiments that tear at the foundations of our nationhood. Such sentiments are condemnable and any bearer of them in the 21st century Nigeria deserves to be discouraged.
Objective analysts believe that General Buhari cannot afford to be seen as another village President in the mould of President Jonathan whose kinsmen virtually transformed into an Ijaw president. Nigerians expect General Buhari to be a Nigerian President, not a tribal prefect. The coming days and weeks will show Nigerians whether Gwandu’s bid to ethnicize and demonize NCC has succeeded, or whether President Buhari will rise above the fray and not allow his government to be hijacked by career opportunists.
No comments:
Post a Comment