It took more than a month to reappoint President Muhammadu Buhari’s kitchen cabinet, though they continued to function in their offices after the election; nearly three months to put the general cabinet in place, with all the ministers-designate screened without the Senate knowing their portfolios; and about three months to reappoint his other aides, with hardly any change. Apart from the ministers, most of the aides and kitchen cabinet staff had their appointments backdated to May 29, partly because they never ceased to function. So, why the delay? It is one of the mysteries that will continue to dog the Buhari presidency. Most other governments in the world, not to talk of democracies, take far shorter time to make all these appointments. In his first term, the president spent much longer time putting a cabinet together, even at a point questioning their relevance, but the country sighed and bore the consequences of his unfathomable approach to governance with imperfect equanimity.
Once the president finally but more quickly got round to making his second term appointments, particularly constituting his cabinet, opinions became sharply divided on what ideas and preferences drove and still drives him. Is his mind as snarled as his appointments? Or is he just boyishly spontaneous and unhurried about everything, regardless of the gravity and urgency of that everything? Does he at all have any conception of Nigeria, and if so, in his mind, is it a conception of a unified whole or a parochial, fragmented and eclectically assembled entity? No answer fits all. The country must, therefore, continue to cavort among many answers and puzzles. On some occasions, the president seems capable of rousing passion for certain national causes; and on some other occasions, he seems also perfectly capable of promoting so much discord that it is difficult to tell who he is, when he is himself, and when he is not himself.
Historians, and perhaps too posterity, will face an arduous task of passing a fair judgement on the Buhari presidency, particularly making sense of his motives, examining his bona fides, and assessing his vaunted claims as a patriot, nationalist and governmental ethicist. To those who intensely dislike his style and policies — he is not really a politician, and can’t be accused of playing politics — that judgement is crystal clear. But to others who are more patient and introspective, they will have to wait until the next two or more years to pass a judgement. Whether for or against, assessors must establish their methodology and follow it scrupulously and consistently. To, therefore, say a few things about his cabinet and his laborious method of assembling his ministers and kitchen cabinet is not to entirely dismiss his government or damn him. It is, however, necessary periodically to examine his style, policies and appointments, nearly all of which have been baffling, agitating and controversial. In the end, it will probably be found that while he has impacted the country in some significant ways, he has paid little attention to both the long run and the need to lay a solid foundation for democracy.
President Buhari is in fact one of Nigeria’s greatest apostles of the short run. He is instinctive and spontaneous, regardless of whether his instinctiveness and spontaneity are harnessed for the right causes or not. More curiously, once his mind is made up, it is usually unbendable. Hence his service chiefs have stood the test of time, not necessarily of efficiency. This may also explain why his first term cabinet suffered little or no change, notwithstanding the buffeting by critics, or what the country felt. His second term cabinet which was inaugurated some 11 days ago now seems set to become another test of the essential Buhari, a clue to his controversial simplicity, lack of adventurousness, and lack of attention to detail. Many critics have perused his cabinet list and remarked his inattentiveness to both the big and the little things that matter. Does he recognise the signals his cabinet list has triggered? It is hard to say.
But when President Buhari remarked to an audience that by appointing two ministers each from Kano and Kaduna States he had paid his debts to the two states for voting massively for him in the last presidential poll, he gives the frightening impression that he neither understands the deeper meaning of democracy nor appreciates the weighty significance of the presidency, indeed his presidency on which rests the fate of a country harried by doubts, low self-esteem, confusion and insecurity. By drawing elemental correlations between votes and appointments in the face of a national security emergency typified by what is clearly a failing economy and a failing state, the president seems unable to rise to the higher ideals of leadership and statecraft. Here indeed are opportunities for a leader to rise to the occasion, someone to redefine who Nigeria should be and what it should represent in the world; someone to inspire hope and self-belief; someone to take the country’s contentious ethnic swords and fashion them into a wholesome and gigantic ploughshare; someone who, at the end of his presidency, would leave Nigeria changed for the better for all time.
One important signal the cabinet list emits is that it gives a glimpse of the values and principles that drive President Buhari as a person and leader. He has on the surface rewarded states which voted massively for him, but in reality the cabinet appointments showed a skewness that is at once limiting and indulgent, including the superfluous Humanitarian and Disaster Management ministry. Rather than serve as a reward indicator, the list exudes the ardour of insularity and dogmatism. It further indicates that there will really be no philosophical, ideological and even practical foundations to sustain and prod the cabinet into loftiness. The president obviously sees the list as nothing more than a testament to his inchoate understanding of nationhood. But by loading his native Northwest with nine senior ministerial appointees and justifying that unusual generosity on the grounds of electoral harvest, and by imbuing some key ministries with an ethnic hue and backbone, the president appears to have finally made up his mind just what conclusions he wants Nigerians to draw about his presidency.
As many critics have volunteered, President Buhari’s second term cabinet is not exceptional for anything. In soul and identity, it is indistinguishable from his first cabinet. In ideology, it remains virtually conservative, and in composition only to a little extent eclectic. The president has neither changed nor shown any significant indication that the country he has been privileged to lead thrice deserves a total and revolutionary makeover. Consequently, he didn’t seem capable of producing a cabinet that would commit itself to that putative revolutionary assignment. There are of course a few exceptions — of ministers with an eye on history, who know full well that despite the uninspiring nature of the government they serve, much is expected of them. But they are too few to inspire a major change in direction and depth. Given the way they were assembled, not to say the needless delay in putting together the president’s aides and kitchen staff, it is all but clear that something deep and central, perhaps an inner steely core that should be the fulcrum of this government and presidency, is missing.
There is no one to look up to in the team assembled by the president to help him deliver on his promises, someone who can inspire hope for Nigeria’s great leap forward into the future — no one in the cabinet, and none among his close and kitchen cabinet staff. To mould a great country starts with getting the philosophical underpinnings right. But no such lofty ideas are in sight, and there won’t be any in the next four years. Nigeria is, therefore, in danger of continuing to function on suspended animation, as it struggles to implement a bastardised form of federalism and presidentialism. The economy is acutely hamstrung by wrong formulae and principles, and the political environment has become deeply carcinogenic and illiberal to the point of endangering democracy altogether. Rule of law has been dismembered, with only token gestures waved casually in the market place, while basic and fundamental rights are dangerously abridged.
Even in the best of environments, the new cabinet will struggle to deliver a lasting impact. Now shackled by the insistence of the president that they route their affairs through the Chief of Staff (CoS) and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), it is hard to envision the mobility and flexibility the country’s dire situation calls for in order to help resolve existential challenges. The president and his spokesmen cite presidentialism as the reason to impose the kind of order and decorum needed by his government to function smoothly. They are right. But not only is the president generally aloof and distant, the office of the CoS through which the ministers must navigate their Panama canal has also not demonstrated the promptness and efficiency required to both lubricate and aerate the system. Even if a president decides to be sectional, he still has an obligation to make the system work. But this system could not function to full capacity in the past four years because the president did little to reduce the chokehold militating against its smooth operation.
Many critics see the shape of the cabinet as signalling the first shots for the 2023 elections. This is perhaps exaggerated. The cabinet is in fact more a reflection of the dichotomic worldview of both the president and his aides than an indication of political coherence, a worldview that is only theoretically committed to Nigerian unity but practically and distinctly unfavourable to progress. Though the Buhari presidency has acted as if it was empowered by a sectional consensus to proceed the way he has done, given the high incidence of insecurity in the country, however, and the increasingly bold challenge offered by many non-state actors’ to law and order, initial calculations and permutations will be proved to be grossly overrated, and every trace of sectionalism and provincialism will be put to dire test in the coming years.
A few weeks ago, the president remarked that he would not groom any successor. His ascent to power had little to do with his person or accomplishments. His successor will profit little from his controversial record in office or his commitment to any person. His judgements have not been unimpeachable; it would be out of character to now trust his judgement of a successor. Luckily, his cabinet shows no indication whatsoever of any impending grooming. If anything, the cabinet is the clearest reflection of a president whose obsession is to burnish his own image, sate his passion for leadership, and achieve full personal restoration that puts the lie to the opinion of him propagated by the coup of 1985.