Corruption and nepotism in the AUC: The scandal continues unpunished!
Suspicious appointments of incompetent candidates to high profile posts in the African Union Commission (AUC) raise many eyebrows, but don’t seem to shake African leaders so far.
Surprising corruption and unfair decisions continue in the process of employment for the remaining positions of directors in the AUC where the Deputy Chairperson of the African Commission Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa seems to be the main protagonist and designer of the course disregarding the most basic ethical rules supposed to govern an employment process of this magnitude.
This is happening under the deliberate knowledge of the Chairperson Musa Faki Mohamed, and under the watch of the current 55 Heads of State and Government of the AU.
In the most recent examples of the strange administration of AU affairs that Botswana Guardian was able to verify, Nsanzabaganwa refused to appoint a properly qualified Ethiopian candidate, who came first in the shortlist for the post of Director of the Medical Department.
She chose instead another Ethiopian national (minister of transport) for the post of Director of the Peace Fund! And this despite the fact that her chosen candidate is actually an engineer and expert in transportation and has obviously no competences to be appointed as Director of a Peace fund!
But, by appointing her, the Deputy Chairperson eliminated the chances of the Ethiopian candidate who deserved to be the Director of the Medical Department since it is not possible for Ethiopia to have two directors in the AUC headquarters.
Using the same tactic, Nsanzabaganwa excluded a Nigerian candidate from getting the post of Director of Protocol despite the fact that he was ranked first in the shortlist, while she appointed one of his compatriots as head of the Directorate of Medical Services although he ranked second in the shortlist!
In continuation of her plan to bring her favourite candidates as staff of the AUC, Nsanzabaganwa chose a candidate from Eswatini as Director of Women and Youth while excluding a South African, who has proven extensive experience in managing the Directorate for three (3) years.
The elimination of the South African candidate was intentional and came on the pretext that South Africa obtained the post of director of the Immigration Center in Sudan.
This is a strange argument, because the six big contributing countries of the Union (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Morocco) have the right by quota to three (3) Directors at least, one of which must be in the Commission HQ.
Other South African high profile candidates were also excluded from the competition to some posts, not because of their incompetence, but because they certainly didn’t fit in Nsanzabaganwa’s arrangement.
Two examples are Professor Dire Tladi, who was excluded from the shortlisting for the post of the AU Legal Counsel knowing that he is the former legal counsel of the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs and President of the United Nations’ Commission for International Law.
The second is Lindiwe Kumalo, also excluded from the same shortlist for Legal Counsel’s post although she worked for four (4) years as a Counselor to Chairperson Musa Faki.
This exclusion of such high profile candidates could have been accepted, had Nsanzabaganwa not appointed a fraud, who falsified his credentials and work experience and lied to the organisation as Botswana Guardian published in details in previous articles. Yet, the man is still serving at this post, unquestioned!
On the other hand, and to refute the argument, Nsanzabaganwa should answer on how can Eswatini for example, have the right to obtain a position of Director in the Commission and not South Africa, Egypt or Angola?
The three mentioned countries have no directors at the commission level although they are among the five largest contributors in the AU budget.
Nsanzabaganwa is therefore deliberately prohibiting some of the big African countries from having some specific directors’ positions at the AU commission because she is worried about the possible influence of their countries, giving the most important ones to friends of hers, or to less competent candidates.
Nsanzabaganwa is hitting again with the same simple tactic, appointing the less qualified to have full control on them later on. It is unclear where this strategy would lead the organisation later.
Likewise, Botswana Guardian has been informed by a reliable source within the AUC HQ that Nsanzabaganwa postponed the appointment of a Director of Standards and Ethics.
This is a strange decision to make because this directorate was scheduled in the reforms’ plan to be operationalised as a priority before the phase of recruitments’ process due to its importance.
But the Deputy Chairperson had another strategy, which is to leave Standards and Ethics to the last, mainly when she learned that both Hamza Sahel (Head of HR Division, from Sudan) and Paulus (Secretary of the
Administrative Court, from Eritrea) have applied for the important position, while she seems to be determined to eliminate both of them from any possible competition on the advertised posts of Directors!
To realise her scheme, Nsanzabaganwa excluded any hope for Hamza to compete after she suggested to the AUC Chairperson to appoint a Sudanese candidate as Director of Protocol, knowing that this later only came
second in the shortlist of candidates.
The same tactic, the publication’s sources said, will be duplicated with Paulus in the near future, where Nsanzabaganwa re-advertised the position and will probably appoint another Eritrean candidate as the head of any directorate to kill any chances for him to compete for the post of Director of Standards and Ethics.
The Deputy Chairperson’s plan is so simple but effective, and can only be stopped when the concerned member states move in time, and when the AUC President understands that there are explicit exclusionary plans to eliminate internal candidates’ chances of getting appointed to posts, even when they are the most qualified, only because the deputy chairperson feels that these candidates, some of them serving the organisation way
before she joined it, won’t accept to play her awkward games.
And still, instead of playing the role she should normally play as Vice President in unifying the staff of the AUC, Nsanzabaganwa seems to be rather adopting a tactic of division to rule and of misinformation towards member states.
In some cases, she is pushing some less qualified internal candidates to compete for posts and selects them to be appointed eliminating more qualified ones.
Worse still, the appointment of the new Secretary General of the AUC was described by a Diplomat as a real disaster, especially after her performance during the last AU Summit, what made the current Chairperson of the
African Union, Azali Assoumani, President of the Union of Comoros, to ask for another officer from the Secretariat to replace her because of her incompetence.
The AUC is in great danger, not only because of many foreign agendas that seem to be unwilling to let the continental organisation fly with its own wings to serve Africa, but also from its own officials, or at least as we have been able to assess, from the current Vice President and all the high profile staff she is deploying in key positions to serve an enigmatic agenda that certainly doesn’t want to allow able, competent and genuine Africans heading the main vacant posts.
It seems that the decision-making mechanisms in the African Union and in the African countries do not care about such facts, and continue to turn a blind eye to this dangerous machination that targets the Pan African organisation, turning it into a puppet in the hands of neocolonialists agendas from within.