Ministerial Appointments: VON DG, Osita Okechukwu Under Fire For Defending Tinubu

Mr Osita Okechukwu, the director general of the Voice or Nigeria, has been criticised for defending President Bola Tinubu’s five ministerial appointments in Southeast.

Okechukwu, in a recent interview, blamed Igbo leaders in the All Progressives Congress for not making political negotiations on behalf of the Igbo race.

According to him, “We should more pungently blame our APC leaders, who instead of genuine advancement of South-east interest were more or less petty in their lobby strategy. After all, one chairs the APC Governors Forum, the foremost power bloc, and the other was already in the Senate.

“To be honest, I was worried when I noticed them blocking our first 11, and one ridiculously was busy rooting for himself as if he is the only qualified person from his state. Their strategy was akin to chasing rats, whilst others were bidding for elephants.”

Emenike Onuh is a public affairs analyst. He said, “Okechukwu has shown that he is not a strong stalwart of APC. He should have made a case to Tinubu instead of speaking as a handicapped person. He seems comfortable earning his living at VON. It is a shame that he is comfortable with Tinubu’s lopsided appointments.”

Charles Obodo, a farmer, said, “We should be concerned about attracting federal infrastructure to Southeast, and not appointments. Appointments are simply to satisfy political interests, and not development.

“Again, Southeast didn’t vote for APC. I task our governors to look inwards towards the development of our homelands. Let’s rediscover ourselves rather than complaining all the time. Under Obasanjo and Jonathan, we had all juicy appointments, but had nothing to show for it. It was ironically Buhari that delivered to us the Second Niger Bridge as well as the reconstruction of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, despite not appointing southeasterners in his administration.”

Ikechukwu Ekwueme, a lawyer, said Tinubu had fulfilled the constitutional requirements in appointing his ministers. In his words, “The constitution stipulates one minister per state, which he has complied with. The other additions are his discretion.”

Elder Nduka Onyia, a retiree of Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State, said it was unfortunate that ‘Tinubu is embarking on appointment-spree when he should be saving cost’.

According to him, “Under this imposed hardship, one would have expected Tinubu to even void appointing two ministers per ministry. What are we doing with a minister and a minister of state in one ministry that has a permanent secretary and other key directors? I am being owed backlogs of pensions, and it disturbs me that our leaders are just creating avenues to circulate our scarce resources amongst recycled politicians.”

A member of APC in Enugu State, Comrade Kenneth Eze, said, “Tinubu should not be blamed. I use Enugu State as an example. All the big politicians in our state claiming to be APC are moles. They publicly endorsed PDP candidates in the last elections. Of course, they also voted for Labour Party’s Peter Obi during the presidential election. The person Tinubu nominated from the state and the state chairman of APC are the only true supporters of Tinubu. Who else would he have appointed? Southeast also gave Tinubu one percent of their votes during the just-concluded presidential election.”

Our correspondent reports that Tinubu gave five ministerial slots to Southeast, seven to Southsouth, ten to Northwest, nine to Southwest, eight to Northeast and eight to Northcentral.