THERE is every good reason to believe that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) means business and is serious about restructuring government agencies for better outcome. The latest evidence is his declaration in far away Washington, DC, the capital of the industrial world last week. To the disappointment of political jobbers but to the pleasure of genuine change enthusiasts, Buhari announced that he will not appoint ministers until he has put in place good structures to prevent the kind of rot that he is trying very hard to clear. Who can quarrel with that?
As President-elect, Buhari had set up the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee to work with former President Jonathan’s team. The Joda Committee received the 18,000 page report of the Anyim Federal Government Committee on May 25th. It worked hard to make sense of the report and make its recommendations which it submitted in an 800-page report to President Buhari shortly after the inauguration of the new administration.
It is significant to note that when he submitted his committee’s report, Joda had urged the nation to be patient with the president as he mulled over the report to determine what was best for his administration and for the country. He noted unambiguously that the transition from one political party to another was not an ordinary one and that the President needed time to digest the report and do the best.
As a deliberative leader, who understood the historical significance of his election and who took his mandate seriously, Buhari decided to take his time to study the report before moving on with any appointments. This is reasonable especially in view of the disclosure by Chairman Joda that due to time constraint, his committee wasn’t able to interview and seek clarifications from former ministers and government operatives on their hand-over notes which were received only four days to the May 29 inauguration.
In the circumstance, Buhari and his team had to carefully sort issues out on their own. In view of that situation, is it reasonable for the president to start with ministerial appointments? It makes perfect sense to see clearly where the nation is, align its present condition with the destination PMB wants to lead it; and on the basis of these appoint individuals who will be round pegs in round holes.
In a media interview that he granted after the submission of his committee’s report, Malam Joda observed that Buhari cannot afford to make the kind of mistakes that previous administrations made. He made particular reference to the military era when security reports on prospective appointees were not considered before appointments were announced only for such appointments to be rescinded shortly after they were announced.
Joda noted further that since Buhari had made up his mind that he was going to have perfect people work with him, every prospective nominee had to be scrutinised well to avoid past mistakes. This explains the need for time and the presidential declaration in Washington, DC. Patience is counseled.
Beside appointments, the other major issue in Joda’s report is the recommendation for the restructuring of the executive branch. From media reports, it appears that the committee had recommended a maximum of 36 ministers to satisfy constitutional requirement and cover the restructured ministries. If the President accepts the recommendation, he will have started on a good and promising note. From the leaks concerning the ministries and agencies recommended for merger, the committee has rendered a good account of its stewardship. The ball is in the court of the president.
By the same token, however, with the courageous restructuring of the executive branch, other extant structures cannot be kept in place to avoid pouring new wine into an old bottle.
First, there is a crying need for the restructuring of the legislative branch and its budget. This has been a sore finger in the body politic and the growing pain can be allowed to linger only at the expense of our national comfort. Some defenders of the indefensible have argued that among other necessities, each NASS member must have at least 5 aides. But they have not provided any reasonable justification for such wastage. Sure some private professionals do need aides to care for the house, cook their meals, and carry their portfolios and handbags. But do they charge these to company accounts?
Second, state governments certainly need restructuring in the face of the obviously unsustainable cost of governance. It is unfortunate that states now depend on federal bail out to pay staff. I am sure that the situation is not totally due to gubernatorial incompetence or profligacy. Most of them inherit huge bureaucracies that put a drag on capital development. The question is whether a few must determine the pace of government investment in infrastructure? Sure every governor needs a rethink of large cabinet for far too many ministries. If PMB takes the lead, states must follow.
Finally, the nation as a constituency has the most need as far as restructuring is concerned. Unfortunately, this is also the space where the most challenge is. Are members of the president’s party on the same page? Is he able to summon the political courage to challenge his party to take the high road?
For far too long, at least since 1966, the federal government has grabbed too many functions, with far little success, and a monumental failure in the matter of satisfying the yearnings of the people, which is the sine qua non of governance. We have been getting the same failing results for almost fifty years and we still keep doing the same thing. That is insanity and we need to come back to our national sense.
In the case of those functions such as citizenship and immigration matters, including the issuance of international passports, which are rightly assigned to the federal government, we err grievously in the over- centralisation of such functions. A passport holder had her name incorrectly written on her passport by Immigration agents. But she was told that the correction cannot be made in Lagos where the mistake occurred. She had to go to Abuja to have the mistake corrected. This makes no sense.
In every aspect of our national life, we embrace our ethnic nationalities. We protect and promote our diverse cultures, and we respect and seek to conserve our various traditions. What is even embarrassing is that ethnics protect their own kin no matter the depth of corrupt practices they are identified with.
To succeed, however, genuine and justifiable ethno-national interests need a governance structure that is truly federal. With such a structure, each ethnic nationality can do the most for itself in terms of promoting its cultural traditions and giving the best education to its residents. This is done effectively only by making states and zones the loci of some of the most important functions of government.
It is true that many states lack the viability needed for success and zonal collaboration becomes essential to generate adequate internal revenue so the dependency on the center is eliminated. Fortunately, it now appears that we have moved away from treating geo-political zones as no-go areas which was where we were during the National Conference. Some had argued then that zones have no place in the constitution and therefore none in governance.
Speaker Dogara has perhaps inadvertently legitimised zones with his recommendation for the sharing of House principal offices among the six zones as a requirement of Federal Character. We should now expect zones to feature more effectively in our discourse on restructuring. This is an unintended consequence of the embarrassing NASS leadership crisis.
