President Return

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua returned from his 10-day medical check-up in Saudi Arabia yesterday, where he also performed the lesser Hajj (Umra).




Barely a few hours after arriving the Aso Rock Villa, the president responded to media reports, which alleged that his ongoing civil service reforms were anti-north and a promotion of a southern agenda.



The president equally dismissed claims of northernisation of the nation's banking sector, as alleged by some southerners, through the government's action in which some bank executives were indicted for sharp practices.



A national daily had reported yesterday that the reforms being implemented by the new Head of Service, Mr Steven Oronsaye, were aimed at frustrating the upward movement of northerners in the federal bureaucracy in favour of southerners.



In the case of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the presidency defended the reform initiated by the governor of the apex bank, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, saying it was intended to restore sanity to the industry and add value to investor's interest.



Speaking to State House correspondents through his spokesman, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi, Yar'Adua decried a continuous linkage of every public policy to ethnicity, saying that every well-meaning Nigerian must be wary of the resurfacing of ethnic politics in the nation's polity.



He said the primary purpose of introducing the tenure system was to institute due process in the appointment of directors and permanent secretaries, arrest the succession crisis in the service, create vacancies, reinvigorate the system, and boost the morale of qualified and deserving officers.



According to Adeniyi, Yar'Adua was not happy with the new trend of ethnicisation of politics and politicisation of ethnicity in Nigeria, and wondered why the introduction of tenure for permanent secretaries and directors in the Federal Civil Service should be a thing of apprehension when the exercise "is already boosting morale within the system."



The presidency was particularly irked by those it believed were out to misrepresent the facts contained in the approval granted by the president.



Adeniyi said: "What is particularly unfortunate is the recourse to ethnicity whenever some interests are affected by crucial decisions taken in promotion of national well-being.



"While no one has faulted the exercise, there is now a whispering campaign that it is targeted against the North simply because the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mr. Steve Oronsaye, is from Edo State; the same way those affected by the banking reform would argue it is targeted against the South because the CBN Governor, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, hails from Kano!"



He added, "While the Nigerian civil service has undergone several reforms and will continue to undergo reforms in conformity with the ever-changing times and circumstances, the latest exercise, which has been approved by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, is the tenure for permanent secretaries and directors in the Federal Civil Service."