President Muhammadu Buhari is likely to submit his list of ministerial nominees to the Senate before the end of the month. Observers say it is a historic opportunity for him to get a better team. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI gives an insight into the cabinet that is in the offing.
FOLLOWING criticisms that he was yet to make appointments four months after he was declared winner of the February 23 presidential election and a month after his inauguration for his second term, President Muhammadu Buhari late last week announced the re-appointment of his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, and 11 personal staff. The appointments take effect from May 29; most of the appointees were the same people that worked with him during the first term.
This is perhaps in keeping with entreaties by many Nigerians that he should not take forever to assemble his cabinet this time around. It took him six months after inauguration to assemble the team that worked with him in his first term. While the President was dillydallying over his cabinet in 2015, the economy slid into recession – no thanks to a sharp fall in the global price of oil. As a result, the naira weakened disastrously against the dollar, millions of jobs were lost, businesses closed shops, insecurity deepened in the Northeast and North-central and investors fled in droves, as they sought signals and confidence boosters from the then new president.
Observers say a second tenure gives the President another chance to choose a better team than those he worked with in the first term. It is a historic opportunity for him to choose right, since he is on his second and last term and does not require the support of a coterie of associates to win another election. The reasoning is that he must have paid off those who worked for him in his first term with cabinet positions, board appointments or contracts. So, he expected to hit the ground running this time around by bringing out his list on time.
A lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State, Dr. Godwin Dappa, said President Buhari must make his appointments with the sole aim of improving service delivery and democratic governance. He said: “Right now, there is a lacuna from what happened during his first term and the lacuna is causing a lot of problems such as insecurity all over the country.
“There is no telling whether we are going to experience a recurrence of what took place in 2015. Mr. President is slow in his approach to issues, but if he wants to get it right, he will get it right. This time around a lot of people made contributions to his victory, so he will definitely want to compensate as many of them as possible. From what we have witnessed so far, he is also likely to retain some of his first term ministers that performed well.”
The National Chairman of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie, believes there will be a delay in constituting President Buhari’s cabinet this time around, “because the circumstances are a bit different from that of 2015”. He said: “The 9th National Assembly is yet to be fully constituted. He may not want to send a list to the Senate before the leadership is fully constituted, in order not to exact undue pressure on them.
“The appointments include members of boards of commissions that will require Senate approval. I want to believe the statements of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, and the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Femi Adesina, who said earlier that the list would not exceed the end of July. It is only when the National Assembly is fully constituted and the list is not submitted that people will begin to raise their eyebrows.
“If he submits the list now, there are bound to be agitations, which will eventually affect the screening exercise. But when he submits the list and screening follows immediately, such agitations will be limited. If that is the case, the delay would be understandable.”
On the calibre of people that should be appointed into the incoming cabinet, Okorie said he expects Buhari to go for men of integrity; people with a good track record in their chosen fields of endeavour. He said: “They should also be men and women of sound intellectual backgrounds. If they are technocrats, it is fine, but the bottom line is that ministerial appointments are political appointments and the appointees will work with people in ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that are specially trained in their respective fields of human endeavour.
“So, one is not insisting that ministers must also be technocrats. What is important here is their track record of integrity. For instance, there are doubts about the integrity profiles of some of the ministers he worked with in his first term.
“If you look at what is coming out now, regarding two of his former ministers, Mr. Okechukwu Enelamah and Mr. Udoma Udoma, if due diligence had been done before their appointments, it would have helped to save the administration the current embarrassment. It would appear that the Department of State Security Service (DSS) didn’t do sufficient background checks on them, prior to their appointment in 2015. There are allegations linking them with about $2 billion scam in the banking industry and these are people that held very critical positions in the administration.
“There is also the need for them to have leadership credentials, because what is playing up now is high-level politics and if you don’t have thoroughbred politicians to lead the ministries, then there would be a little bit of problem.”
Okorie said the President does not require the input of state governors to constitute his cabinet. He said: “The party supported him to win, so it is only fit and proper that he picks his cabinet from within the fold. The governors themselves constituted their cabinet without the input of the President. So, there is no reason why he should get their input in that regard.
“The President is very conversant with what is going on in the public domain, so he wants to appoint the calibre of men and women that will work towards improving his image, through service delivery. To surrender such important assignment to the whims and caprices of state governors would not be healthy.”
Prof. Dappa said some of the problems facing the country today, such as insecurity, could have been nipped in the bud, if Buhari had appointed the right people into his cabinet in 2015. His words: “If he had made the right appointments in his first term, it would have solved some of the problems causing insecurity in the country today. So, this time around, he must make his appointments in a manner to tackle the problems the country is facing at the moment.
“There appears to be a cabal within the presidential villa that believes they are untouchable; they are the ones causing a lot of problems for the President. I have said it before that Nigeria is practicing militocracy, because what we have in place now is a fusion of military dictatorship and democracy.
“He must make his appointments in good time in this second tenure, so that if there is a problem somewhere, he would know who to hold responsible for it; the permanent secretary cannot be held responsible, because he has limited powers, as a civil servant. Mr. President should wake up; the second tenure is becoming too dramatic, in the sense that we don’t know whether he would do better or things would degenerate further.”
Dappa is also one of those who believe that President Buhari needs more of technocrats than professional politicians, because the latter will turn everything into politics, which is their playground but technocrats will know that they are there to do a job for the betterment of the country.
His words: “He should be able to bring in technocrats; professionals in different areas, not just anybody. He does not need to go too far; there are professionals that worked for his re-election. Let him appoint such people into his cabinet.
“Some of the ministers that performed well during his first tenure also deserve to be re-appointed. But he must ensure that such decision is based on competence, not sentiments. In a nutshell, let him put round pegs in round holes; not square pegs in round holes. Appointments should not be made because the appointees were nominated by the cabal within the presidency. He should focus on people that have respect for the masses and the fear of God.”
A professor of Political Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Jonah Onuoha, is not satisfied with the performance of Buhari’s ministers in his first term in office. He said: “There is what we called the Capture Theory in politics; this has to do with a tendency for political jobbers to capture whoever is in power. Once they capture you, you see the world through them, they dictate what you do and control you.
“So, (members of) this cabal are those who helped to bring the man (President) to power. Some of them have invested so much and the President has so much trust in them. These people see Presidency as a means of production. They circle themselves around him (the President) and make sure that other ‘competitors’ are pushed away. So, in most cases, it is difficult for whoever is in power to observe this in reality.”
The don, however, expressed the hope that the President would rise above the groups in his second term. He said the President will choose competence above party politics and will not see ministerial appointments as a form of political compensation. He also believed that political factors and considerations would not affect the performance of the ministers in the second term.
Onuoha said: “He (the President) needs to rise above those who brought him to power. They campaigned and did everything possible to put him where he is. Therefore, he sees himself as being obligated to pay them back.”
Four years ago, the presence of many lawyers in cabinet generated a lot of interest. Ten out of the 36 nominees were people with legal background. Thus, out of every three ministers, at least one who was a lawyer. Almost five of them are Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Chief of Staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari, and a good number of the president’s aides; marking it the first time in the history of Nigeria that the Federal Executive Council was markedly populated by a large number of professionals from a particular sector.
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