What has changed since Buhari became President? (4)

The on-going protests in the South-East requires creative handling by the federal government, governors of states that comprise the zone and Igbo leaders of thought to avoid unnecessary escalation of the situation. But the arrogant, insensitive, and threatening comments by a few military officers and cowardly hasty condemnation by some prominent Ndigbo are disingenuous, because both sides are trivialising the key issues of marginalisation, exclusion and alienation raised by the Biafran agitators, which lie at the heart of the troublesome unresolved “national question”.

It must be pointed out that President Buhari’s apparent indifference to the concerns of Ndigbo, from the time he was military head of state, through when he was Chairman, Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund to now that he is President, constitutes part of the remote and immediate causes of the renewed agitation for Biafra. It would take a Eureka experience or epiphany for Buhari to change his attitude towards Ndigbo generally. It follows that, on the issue of security and containment of centrifugal ethnic irredentism, there is no noticeable positive change since May 29, 2015.

We now come to the issue of ministerial appointments, which has elicited considerable discussion for quite some time. To begin with, although the President and many Nigerians presume that merger of ministries would save money for the government, there is no conclusive proof to that effect – there is even a report which debunks that presumption. Basically, it is the approved budget that determines the expenditure profile of ministries, which implies that although power, works and housing are now under one ministry, for instance, instead of two or three ministries, budgetary allocation to the bloated new ministry must reflect the critical nature of the sectors under it, which are very capital intensive in nature. Thus, under separate ministries power, and works and housing may get smaller budgetary allocation collectively than now that they are lumped into one ministry.

The delay by President Buhari in constituting his cabinet is uncalled for, judging by the fact that the list, when it was finally made public, is overwhelmingly a roster of politicians with corruption allegations hanging on some of them and individuals who helped APC capture power from the PDP. Consequently, the claim by Garba Shehu that the President was taking his time to select the very best to work with is a shibboleth intended to explain away the prolonged high calibre “wheeling and dealing” by the major power blocks in APC to appropriate instruments of ministerial office as reward for their contributions to Buhari’s victory. Anyway, by nominating ministers without assigning them to ministries prior to screening by the Senate, President Buhari merely repeated the mistake of his predecessors and wasted a wonderful opportunity to improve the quality of legislative screening of the prospective ministers.

I think the President should have inaugurated a positive paradigm shift in ministerial appointment by attaching ministries to the ministerial nominees before sending the list to the Senate. Besides, there is nothing innovative or transformative in the President’s list. Indeed, like every ministerial appointment since the administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Buhari’s choice includes competent professionals and the-not-so-competent with questionable antecedents.  Meanwhile, President Buhari should have tried the novel approach of appointing ministers to ministries strictly in tandem with their professional and academic qualifications plus cognate experience, as in the ministries of justice and health invariably headed by a senior lawyer and medical practitioner respectively. Take the case of Babatunde Fashola, an attorney and immediate past governor of Lagos State, who is minister of power, works and housing.

The way I see it, the President’s amalgamation of power, works and housing in one ministry – three critical areas that require specialised technical knowledge and round-the-clock attention – is inappropriate: it constitutes an unnecessary burden for Fashola, which might create unintended problems with serious repercussions for service delivery. Some argue that, because a minister is the political head of a ministry whose major responsibility is to manage personnel and resources in the ministry, there is no advantage in appointing, say, an experienced electrical engineer to head the ministry of power or a geologist with strong academic background and practice in that field as minister of solid minerals, rather than someone whose academic qualifications and professional experience have very little connection with the ministry in question.

Sometimes, instances from established democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom are paraded to demonstrate that a lawyer can perform well as minister of power or of works and housing. Those who belittle the importance of cognate academic and professional background for enhanced performance in the relevant ministries forget that a seasoned electrical engineer can possess similar managerial skills and emotional intelligence manifested by a lawyer who performed relatively well as minister of power, which implies that the engineer’s firsthand knowledge of technical issues connected to power generation, transmission and distribution is an added advantage for him as minister of power ministry when compared to the lawyer in the same post. In the formulation, evaluation and implementation of policies in science and engineering dominated ministries such as power, works and solid minerals, it is better to appoint someone with academic or professional qualifications and experience directly related to those ministries, especially in countries like Nigeria where institutions and traditions of public service have not advanced to the stage that specialist technical knowledge of the core issues dealt with by the ministries we mentioned above may not matter so much.

At this point, let us begin to harvest our thoughts. On the issue of fighting corruption, probably there is little improvement since President Buhari came into office because his anti-corruption reputation might have prevented some lily-livered public officials from stealing. But there is increasing recognition by the President himself, judging by his lamentations that corrupt judges and lawyers are hampering his war against corruption, that dealing with high calibre corruption cases is a very frustrating herculean task in a ramshackle democratic setting such as ours. In terms of inclusiveness from both the ethnic and gender perspectives, Nigeria has regressed since President Buhari assumed office: there is an unjustifiable lopsidedness in favour of Northerners and men in Buhari’s choice of his inner core of lieutenants. The management of our oil and gas sector is still characterised by mediocrity, financial rascality and cronyism. The security situation has not really improved since Goodluck Jonathan left office, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the December deadline President Buhari stipulated for the liquidation of Boko Haram cannot be met by the gallant Nigerian armed forces.

Of course, defeat of the PDP, albeit in a flawed election, is the best change that has happened since the return to civilian rule in 1999, because it has cut the megalomaniac arrogance of the former ruling party to smithereens. From now onwards, no political party will boast without serious consequences that it would rule the country uninterruptedly for decades come what may. I know that the Buhari government is still settling down, and some of the teething problems of the moment, if tackled with genuine patriotism and creative management of available resources, may be resolved soon. I am fully aware that as a dyed in the wool retired soldier and devout Muslim, it would not be easy for President Buhari to blend his entrenched somewhat inflexible habits of thought with the degree of mental flexibility needed to make our convoluted democratic system work without serious convulsions – he is a tiro or neophyte in democratic governance. To help the President, we must ignore the bunkum and sugary insipidities of sycophants and speak out whenever we have good reasons to believe that the federal government is derailing from its primary function of providing enabling environment for optimum unfolding of our productive powers in work, love and recreation.