A New York-based lawyer and chartered accountant, Owolabi Salis, has urged President Bola Tinubu to ensure fairness and equity in his appointments.
Salis said appointments should be an avenue to engineering national unity and cohesion.
He said this in a statement issued on Monday, September 25, 2023, in reaction to the criticisms trailing the recent appointments made by President Tinubu.
Salis, who is also an expert in diversity management, noted that division was not an option for Tinubu’s administration in view of the current challenges facing Nigeria.
He stressed that this was over the division which polarised the country along religious and ethnic lines during the 2023 general election.
Salis said: “As a diversity expert and somebody with a deep knowledge of Nigerian politics, one would have expected that anything that could further divide our people would have been avoided from day one.
“For a character like Tinubu and his party, the APC, they could have done better, going by the repertoire of experiences.
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“Moreover, Yorubas are for equity. Yorubas are known to harmonise diverse interests and bring everyone together, that’s Yoruba spirituality.
“The truth is that despite our differences, we are one and the same as far as the Nigerian project is concerned.
“Appointments into offices therefore should reflect our diversity as it remains a potent tool that can either make our journey towards nationhood.
“This is why I am particularly concerned about issues so far raised against appointments into offices, especially our financial architecture under the current administration.
“Former President Obasanjo did excellently well in this regard with appointments of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Prof. Charles Soludo, Nuru Ribadu, Nasir El-Rufai, Nenadi Usman, Dr. Kpakol across the country.
“The truth is that good diversity management engenders national unity and luckily Nigeria parades quality people from every geo-political zone of the country, hence any good leader should be able to harness such for national development.
“Thankfully, opportunity still beckons to right the perceived wrongs as President Tinubu can still redeem his image before his critics, who are no doubt right by insisting that the right thing be done.
“No doubt, one of the things that worked for him in the last elections is his perceived pan-Nigeria posture, it is therefore incumbent upon him to prove his critics wrong and that he is President of all Nigerians and not of any ethnic stock.”
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