Nearly six months after assuming office, President Muhammadu Buhari has finally assigned portfolios to his ministers. The universal impression is that the cabinet is star-studded and capable of delivering on the programmes and policies of the All Progressives Congress (APC). With a hint of immodesty, the president also enthusiastically indicated how he avoided the mistakes of his predecessors, consulted widely, and deftly put round pegs in round holes. Polemically, experts may question the integrity of his ‘wide consultations’ and the substance of who and what constitute round pegs and round holes. But given public perception of his assignation of portfolios, not to talk of the technocratic zeal of the ministers, Nigerians appear inspired, if not relieved, to give him the benefit of the doubt.
President Buhari is obviously a late bloomer. From the early months of his presidency when he described federal ministers as noisemakers, and permanent secretaries as the real engine of government, he has quietly given way to disillusionment with the private but outlandish trust he reposed in top civil servants, some of whom have just been sacked and are awaiting prosecution. He seems to have now embraced an epiphanic belief in the role and attributes of federal ministers. More, given the manner he has assigned portfolios and the way he romanticises his cabinet, he even seems to believe rather immoderately that ministers are the lodestar of his government, upon whose shoulders the success or failure of his administration is expected to rest. His conversion is rapid and convincing. He will hope his trust in the men he has appointed is not misplaced or betrayed.
Nigerians will have to become accustomed to their president’s speed. He has taken all of six months to get so far. He will take many more months to accomplish other yet weightier things, the most crucial of which is the articulation of a vision, not programmes, for the country. This vision is expected to be synthesised from his party’s manifesto or road map, and will serve as the main anchor to hold together the multifarious visions his ministers will articulate in their ministries. The body of ministers functioning as one can, however, neither conceptualise nor articulate this vision, though they may provide its building blocks and give a concrete feel to it. Only the president can. Until that vision is articulated and the country buys into it, whatever success the president achieves may not transcend the commonplaceness evident in many stable and even developed countries. That commonplaceness may be good enough for Nigerians, given their antecedents and sufferings, and even lower expectations. But for any achievement to rise to the grand and soaring level of legacy, a great vision must help to carve a niche for the country and embody the collective sacrifices and yearnings of the people.
Six months of methodicalness have brought Nigeria to the point where President Buhari has constituted a cabinet. He has done well, and he has carried out his task admirably, albeit slowly. But the time lag may evince something much deeper than just pawky caution. It may be indicative of the disparateness of the president’s thoughts, his hesitations, his undecipherable priorities, and his lack of definable and transcendental vision. While it is good and desirable to run a country where corruption is low, where infrastructure is great, where security is sound and the country stable and peaceful, it is nothing exactly remarkable. If care is not taken, Nigeria under President Buhari may follow this trajectory. But if he appreciates that these achievements are nothing but stepping stones to a greater destination, and that the time is now to chart that almost intangible and ethereal destination, only then can it be said the president has an intuitive grasp of nationhood, that he has been to the mountaintop, and that he possesses a metaphysical connection to that great destination.
However, on the surface, the cabinet and portfolios will be criticised for their structure and suppositions, whether intended or not. Neither the North nor the Southwest can complain. Both have been empowered and compensated. By bestowing bureaucratic power on the Southwest, the president seems to have completely disemboweled the other faction of the Yoruba elite which embraced mainstreaming during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. But either by design or accident, the president also seems to be preparing to invoke a new power elite in the zone more amenable to him, distinctly and even exclusively pro-Buhari, an organised army to be deployed for reelection and other purposes in 2019 or any other time. The history and political culture of the Southwest, however, make that latter proposition very troubling, unstable and often unworkable.
At another general level, deliberately or inadvertently, President Buhari also seems by his cabinet and their portfolios to have bifurcated the country into two dominant power equations: the North to man the real but unseen power base of the nation, and the Southwest to man the bureaucracy; the former to inspire the levers of power, and the other to inspire the execution of programmes and policies. The perceptive southeasterner and critical South-South analyst are likely to feel shortchanged by the whole arrangement. Whether this arrangement will work remains to be seen. But surely, had the Jonathan government embraced even a little of the purposefulness being demonstrated by President Buhari, his government would have had much to show for his efforts and to still keep the PDP in office.
As enthusiastic as this column and many Nigerians are about the Buhari cabinet and portfolio distribution and management, it is impossible not to ask why the president’s retention of the Petroleum ministry makes sense to him. It is needless, unwise, distracting and fated to create more problems for him and the country than it will solve. Retaining that portfolio may also reflect his incomplete appreciation of the magnitude of the problems he faces as he pilots Nigeria, the onerousness of the transformation the country requires, and his sanctimoniousness which he pushes in the face of the country, as if he could trust no one else to honestly direct that sensitive and graft-infested ministry.
It is also difficult to understand what logic propelled the president to merge the three demanding ministries of power, works and housing in the hands of one minister, Babatunde Fashola, former Lagos State governor. The competence of Mr Fashola is of course not in doubt, but it is unlikely that given the collapse already engendered in at least the power and works ministries, one minister can give the undivided attention sorely needed. It is unrealistic and unsustainable.
