It’s all so reminiscent of the poet, Gabriel Okara’s ‘The Fisherman’s Invocation’.
“The celebration is now ended,” he wrote, “but the echoes are all around/whirling like a harmattan whirl-wind throwing dust around/and hands cover faces and feet grope …”
The government of President Bola Tinubu, with a near-full compliment of ministers, is all but made up. Of 48 ministers, 45 are already in; three, expected.
The sheer number — the highest since 1999 — has evoked the cliché of “bloated” (which it could well have been); against its supremely preferred opposite: “lean-and-mean”, among the many armchair critics, making eternal clatter in the media.
Still, beyond the easy groupthink of thundered doom, simply because of the lean economic times, “bloated” is no vice any more than “lean-and-mean” is a virtue. It all depends on how a government deploys its talents, to achieve its goals.
A government can adopt the accountant’s ethos: severely counting the beans; brutally cutting costs; or be the audacious marketer: splashing the cash, in the supreme gusto of landing the big trove, so long as it suffers no financial recklessness.
Still, each would pay (or earn plaudits) for its adopted philosophy — and so, would the Tinubu Presidency. That about sums up the sanctity of starting right.
So, after all the zip-and-zoom, and the go-go talk by new ministers, dazzling with a can-do spirit of a new order, even the reception shrieks are becoming a distant echo.
Now, the president and his (wo)men are all but alone, faced with the clinical cold of it all; by the starkness — if not outright heaviness — of their daunting historic tasks.
Alone. All alone. At the top — and just as well!
Still, earliest nay-voices boom. Some lobbies appear somewhat determined, fair or foul, to run out of town Hannatu Musawa, the new minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, even before her ministerial tour begins.
They claim she’s a serving National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member; and growl no “corper shun!” can legally and legitimately be minister of the Federal Republic!
Others already wax lyrical over the alleged duplication of roles and non-specificity of assigned ministerial mandates: making a huff over “innovation” domiciled in both the Communications & Digital Economy; and Science & Technology ministries.
Without splitting hairs, “innovation” is neither here nor there. Indeed, it could be the hallmark of any ministry, depending on its creative zip.
Still, for all it is worth, the administration should take early notes of these faint echoes before they assume rumbling thunders, particularly with an eternally distracted media, ever chasing explosive shadows over quiet substance.
Still, for once, what the media must do, if it must be part of the solution in these troubled times, is clamber off its noise-making zone; and play in the more exerting pedestal of clinical x-ray of policies, generating vigorous debates and helping to birth possible solutions to long-running national challenges — from its long-cherished bangs of sterile howling and barren finger-pointing.
But that might be asking for too much; and the administration should take note.
Again — and this bears re-stating: it will soar or sink by the sheer rigour of own reason; the grit to push through its agenda; or even the cunning of its wiles: to game its eternal fiends posturing as pro-people crusaders, in a mutual showdown in brutal realpolitik!
It’s not always pretty. But the one that blinks last scales the brink — and laughs last!
Still, if folks would just levitate over the easy and the noisy, they would perhaps see, instead of 48 “bloated” ministers and hangers-on, just ministerial clusters not more than 12!
These clusters, though grafted from differing ministries, form the building blocs to pivot exciting new opportunities; built upon very challenging fundaments, erected by the Muhammadu Buhari order from 2015, after the wanton crash of the PDP years.
Now, is the President, though commander-in-chief, policy musical-in-chief enough to weld and whip these concentric clusters into winsome harmonics that not only capture his vision but also brings it to life with rare élan, class and dash?
Again, the start isn’t always pretty — just as the mess in making sausages — but the end graft might well be worth the trouble.
Take Wale Edun and his Finance and Economy Coordination ministry. Junking subsidy without local refining and floating the Naira may well sate instant elite (read market) greed. But it’s a double-whammy that further roasts mass pockets.
But all these market reforms, complete with tax administration and revenue-collection tinkering, are to fix the state’s financial infrastructure. Capture more cash and shovel them towards financing core goals. So, you’ll begin to talk less debts but more revenue. But it’s no open sesame. It’s exerting fresh thinking and back-breaking work.
Then, the cluster of two that virtually runs through everything: Justice, which produces a legal cover for everything — isn’t democracy the celebration of the rule of law? And Power: which energizes everything — didn’t God say let there be light: and day and night — and life as we know it — were birthed?
While Justice goes ahead to fortify Defence, Police, the courts and internal security (which by the way, by the administration’s pretexts encapsulates food security), Power provides the spark for everything: from agricultural processing, to manufacturing and all types of businesses. If this twin-cluster thrives, the prospects would be very bright.
Then, the other “coordination”: Health and Social Welfare. Add Education to that cluster and you’re thinking, pin-point, of human infrastructure: health, education and general social wellness. That’s the bastion of real development: human development.
No less exciting: the core physical infrastructure ministries: Transport (auto and rail), Aviation (air, safety regulations and infrastructure) and Marine and Blue Economy (Shipping and Maritime).
This core, calibrated into three, holds the ace for economic rejuvenation and eventual redemption. The tri-ministers here are condemned to succeeding — or it would be bad news for the polity and the president, were they to falter. Add enhanced agricultural output and processing, and you can build on the agriculture-infrastructure hub of the Buhari years.
But on that plain, it’s dawn yet. For all its borrowing, the Buhari order only raised infrastructure-to-GDP ratio from 1:5 to 2:5. In 2015, the economy was near-dead! So, these ministers must push that ratio to at least 3.5 to 5. That would be brutal work!
Still, it’s rather exciting that a David Umahi is taking over from a Babatunde Fashola, as Works and Housing minister.
Fashola, the golden boy of Lagos governance, and Rotimi Amaechi were Buhari’s most sparkling infrastructure ministers. Umahi worked wonders in Ebonyi, and is raring to go as Works czar. Other things being equal, that corridor looks rather promising.
Draw Communication and Digital Economy and Science & Technology as a symbiotic cluster, and you could be looking at a putative bastion for youth-powered jobs, particularly in the digital and technical fronts.
Can President Tinubu weave these clusters into a winning symphony of turn-around governance? Time will tell!
Still, let there be less clatter! Let the lonely souls at the top think! Fond hope!
•Reader apology: A bad malaria kept Ripples off this page last week — fulsome apologies!
