After the long wait of more than two months, President Muhammadu Buhari finally announced the names of a 43-member cabinet. Even though the president had promised that he was going to choose those whom he personally knows, there is no evidence that he knows most of the people he has chosen. This is not an indictment by any means. A cursory look at the list makes me feel he did not dig enough to unearth many hidden gems in human resources of Nigeria. We seem to be confused about what system of government we are really running. Is it presidential or cabinet/prime ministerial government? From the way we operate in Nigeria, we seem to be running a hodgepodge system neither “rat nor bird” as we say in this part of Africa. If we were running a truly presidential system, the president should have gone beyond just naming only politicians into his government and found very knowledgeable people who can help him translate his wishes of development into actual reality. He has completely ignored the academics, professionals and the youth and non-political types. He could also have brought into his government some of those young people who ran for the presidency in the last election like the Fela Durotoyes and Moghalus, who in my opinion represent the yearning of our country’s youth and knowledgeable people. By not recognizing them, he is alienating the critical mass of the intelligentsia; the same group who represent the future of our country .Choosing politicians alone is a total misunderstanding of the presidential system of government.
The Abacha constitution we are running the country with, states that each state must be represented in the federal cabinet. This requirement of course is understandable in a plural society like Nigeria but do we have to go beyond having more than 36 ministers which is the number of states we have? As far as I know, there is no state House of Assembly that has more than 43 members which is the number of the Muhammadu Buhari cabinet. How does one run a 43-man cabinet? Is it by voting? This is an anomaly. Even a cabinet of 36 ministers would be unwieldy. The present cabinet to me looks like another parliament or a talking shop where not much will be achieved if everything had to be subjected to normal cabinet discussion and scrutiny which underpin the idea of “collective responsibility” In the case of this huge cabinet, the president will have to have a cabinet within a cabinet more like a “war cabinet” in an emergency situation. Nigeria of course is in emergency. What with a stagnant economy that is not expanding to cope with the employment needs of a growing youthful population. We are also beset by enormous security problems as well as ethnic antagonism largely the result of political manipulation and the inability or refusal of the security forces to cope with the security needs of a bedraggled and helpless people. If the country by the nature of this huge cabinet has to be run by a war cabinet which is really not a bad idea, the war cabinet must be made up of intelligent people cutting across the ethnic, religious and regional divide of this country. This can be done since we now generally agree on the six zonal divide in the country. If however the war cabinet or “cabal” seems to come only from the president’s part of the country, then the hue and cry will begin all over again thus immobilizing the country . What President Buhari should try and do is to bring up constitutional proposals along with the need to prune down the size of government. This will also involve the idea of a unicameral parliament and doing away with present wasteful and expensive senate while radically reducing the number of the House of Representatives while cutting down by half the wasteful do-nothing 774 local governments. As far as I’m concerned, the present states should be the unit of effective administration in a much decentralized government with power and financial resources transferred from the centre to the periphery where the people live. This will not only reduce tension in the land, it will also enhance security because the states and the much stronger local governments will be able to design appropriate security architecture as desired and determined by the peculiarities of each state and local governments away from the current lumbering homogeneity and the inefficiency of the present.
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The president does not have all the time in the world to make these changes and to write his name into our nation’s history. These are not normal times, in fact these are unusual and abnormal times in our country and these things call for extraordinary efforts and vision. The president because of this present situation may have to use executive powers to make necessary changes. It is a case of the end determining the means. A situation in which after four years the country has not been able to increase exponentially electricity generation and distribution calls for a change of direction if not personnel. Within the same period, Egypt with less resources than Nigeria increased its power generation by 11,000 megawatts while our installed capacity hovers around 5,000 megawatts in the so-called biggest economy in Africa. Imagine how big this economy would be if we were able to generate enough electricity to power the economy! For how long are we going to wait? Some of us have spent all our lives for ever waiting for the day when like any normal country, we will have regular supply of electricity and other normal infrastructure characteristic of a developed country. The only way to get to our development destination is through enlightened and effective government and this will not be achieved nor attained through an oversized cabinet whether at the centre or at the states’ level of governance
The great achievement made by the Obafemi Awolowo government in the old Western Region which some of us experienced which covered the present states of Ogun, Osun ,Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Delta parts of Lagos and Bayelsa was accomplished by a cabinet of about 11 ministers . The Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa federal government between 1957 and 1966 was made up of less than 25 ministers. Where we got this federal character mammoth of a cabinet government goes back to the Obasanjo federal character regime which meant well but the Abacha constitution which ignored the fact that many of the 1979 states had been subdivided into small units embraced without modification. This has made the whole thing counterproductive and rather unwieldy and unmanageable .This has become a cog in the wheel of development and efficiency. If we don’t know where we are going, we should at least know where we are coming from. When you add the innumerable numbers of special advisers, special assistants and assistants at presidential, ministerial, parliamentary and state governors and commissioners level, the level of over administration becomes intolerable and uneconomic. We should at least embrace what worked in the past instead of going on like a beheaded chicken with the present situation.
I have always wondered when our governments at all levels will begin to cut down on cost of administration before it is too late. We have a mono-cultural economy that depends on hydrocarbons export of crude oil and liquefied gas which are not infinite. Not only that, with the revolution in energy resources away from global warming climate changing sources and increasingly towards renewables like sun, wind, tide thermal and at worst nuclear energy, it is only a matter of time that our overdependence on hydrocarbon exports will become economically suicidal to put it mildly. We should imagine the scenario where we have nothing to sell to the rest of the world and no money to maintain the replete of our administrative, political and infrastructural architecture. If we have insecurity now, by then we would have reverted to a state of nature where life is nasty brutish and short. In other words, it is high time we made hay while the sun still shines. Other countries are preparing for the coming Industrial Age of artificial intelligence and robotics while all we seem to be doing is sharing political offices and crude oil commissions of unearned income .We should be investing in what will replace the present economy by funding innovation and setting up industries directly related to adding values to our agricultural produce where we at least have comparable advantage vis a vis the rest of the world.
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