Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or, rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government?
“Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning!” –Ecclesiastes 10:16
Forgetting that when an old man falls he looks backwards to reflect on the cause of his fall, much has been the hue and cry over President Muhammadu Buhari’s non appointment of ministers, even in a mere one month. The noise has become so loud you begin to wonder if this is not a carryover of the military’s era of ‘with immediate effect and alacrity’; when appointees first heard about their appointments, as well as dismissals, on the airwaves. Little, I guess, are Nigerians aware that a man of the president’s age, experience and overall exposure, cannot be expected to be driven by undue enthusiasm to jump into those same excitements that have so poorly served Nigeria. I recall that at his second coming, one of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s most harrowing regrets about governance in Nigeria was the fact that literally every modicum of infrastructure and institutions he left behind to drive a developing economy, among them, the Nigerian Airways and the National Shipping Line, had been vaporised by his successors beginning from Alhaji Shehu Shagari, through IBB and the murderous General Abacha, terminating with Abubakar, none of who failed to appoint ministers with alacrity. Nor did the soporific, pitiable Jonathan government delay in appointing ministers. But what did we see of those ministers of a directionless government whose overarching concern was to maintain a policy of appeasement towards every Tom, Dick and Harry President Goodluck Jonathan believed would be useful in his re-election scheme which had commenced as soon as he was sworn in on 29, May 2011.
These ministers were active in condoning oil thefts running into 400, 000 barrels per day even where they had gifted their cousins multi-billion dollar oil pipeline protection contracts just as they were complicit in the heist of the tiny cabal that smoked us all up through the oil subsidy scam. When finally the president and minister thought of doing anything to ameliorate the economically crippling situation, Nigerians woke up on the very first day of January, 2012, to hear that every kobo of ‘subsidy’ had been removed, in a case of blaming, and punishing the victim.
Nor was that all with these selfsame ministers. Edo State Governor, Comrade Oshiomhole, recently alleged that the Finance Minister granted multi-billion waivers, the total of which, I know Mrs Okonjo –Iweala never really told the nation. In Oshiomhole’s words: ‘The Federal Government (obviously on the advice of the coordinating minister) illegally granted waivers to various organisations, running into hundreds of billions of naira that ought to flow to the federation account’. The governor equally informed that this was further compounded by the fact that both the Ministry of Finance and Petroleum Resources, working together, simply refused to transfer to the federation account a lot of the money that ought to have accrued. According to him “over the past four to five years, the NLNG had every year made huge payment -between $1.5 to $2 billion – which ought to go to the federation account. This money was never transferred to the federation account but was unilaterally expended by the Federal Government.”
Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or, rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government? I think we should ponder these things before we get consumed with the jeremiads of some people whose business projections in a continuing PDP government have been dramatically altered.
I will be the first to concede that some who argue for early appointments are truly concerned. For instance, I saw the purity of heart in Dele Momodu’s letter to the president which, for me, was advisory, unlike the adversarial types that have emanated from some partisans, especially to respected professional bodies who are surreptitiously being encouraged to up the ante of public discontent. For instance, after denigrating some of those working quietly with the president as gerontocrats, some of those who are keen on business as usual, have also quarrelled with his not making earthshaking economic policy pronouncements even when they were themselves key to helping the Jonathan government pulverise the country’s economy.
Those who quarrel with the president for preferring to see the entire picture of the akudiaya –wobbling – economy handed over to him on May 29, 2015, in the words of one of the key exponents contend as follows:
a) The way the Federal Government works is that absolutely nothing happens in any ministry in the absence of a minister.
b) To even consummate commercial transactions between one company and another in the oil sector, the minister has to approve it.
c) It’s the minister that signs certificates of occupancy for land deals in Abuja.
d) It’s the minister that approves payments to vendors, contractors, etc and concludes by saying that the system grinds to a halt when the minister is not there.
These have largely been dismissed by those who should know. For instance, a retired federal Permanent Secretary posited as follows, in rebuttal:
“Statement No. 1. is false. Statement 2 may be right for some matters like filling station licence etc, which may require the approval of minister but as regards procurement, the Permanent Secretary handles the implementation. The minister is not involved except for information only. This is in accordance with the provisions of Public Procurement Act of 2007. Involvement of ministers in procurement matters is a violation of the Act. Statement No. 4 is absolutely incorrect; again, all procurement matters stop at the table of the Permanent Secretary (PS) including approval of payments
to vendors and contractors. The Act only provides that the minister should be informed by the Permanent Secretary for information only so that the minister is aware that the aspect of the annual budget is implemented. Therefore, to say that activities in the Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies will be at a standstill in the absence of the minister is not correct, though, some matters that will require the minister’s approval under the law or Civil Service Procedure like Citizenship matters in the Ministry of Interior may wait for the minister’s approval. Once the annual budget is passed into law as Appropriation Act, the implementation is that of Permanent Secretary as the minister has no approving authority on procurements.”
In further canvassing patience, those who argue on the side of the president’s measured pace, given that the ‘ancien regime’ was very hesitant in giving him facts and figures, have further posited as follows: “If a minister is being assigned to a ministry, he/she should know what to go there for in order to have the promised change. Detailed problems are currently being discreetly sorted out in the various ministries and MDAs by the Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executive Officers currently functioning as Acting Heads. Ministers, they contend, are politicians who would need to be put through on their assumption of office. If hurriedly appointed, there could be the tendency for some to go there to create wrong pictures or even cry wolves where there are none.”
For me nothing demonstrates the wrongheadedness of un-reflected appointments – appointments with immediate effect and alacrity, especially at the topmost levels of our past governments, more than the present parlous state of the economy and, indeed, the wholesale paralysis currently engulfing every aspect of our national life. As you read this, fuel scarcity has again hit the filling stations, Power Holding Company, at its various discos, are eagerly dispensing darkness just as 23 out of 36 states of the federation are grappling with unpaid workers salaries resulting largely from very powerful ministers shortchanging the federation account from where the states largely fund their sustenance.
