Ministers: Awaiting Buhari’s List

I see what President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are doing. We all can see it. The long awaited ministerial nominees list came up last week Tuesday, but it wasn’t Buhari’s list. What we got was anti-climatic. It was the APC’s list. I can now see why there was such a long delay in sending that list to the Senate.

On the face of it, Buhari could have nominated all the people on that list whilst he was still campaigning for the presidency. He could have rolled into office in early June with them in tow.

It most likely took all of four months to arrive at this compromise that could only have emerged from a grand alliance’s cooking pot. Buhari would have been reminded by APC grandees of how they re-packaged him and marketed him to Nigerians – especially down south. He would have been reminded of what it cost them in terms of resources - time, money, energy and propaganda. Moreover, APC major stakeholders would have feared another Congress for Progressive Change (CPC)-dominated tranche of appointments.

I suspect that Buhari had wanted to have his way and nominate his own preferred candidates but the larger Party and others wouldn’t have it. Negotiations must have been intense. In the end, a compromise was reached, hence the partial list that surfaced in the Senate last week. I am pretty sure this was the same list that the president was reported to have rejected a couple of months ago as corruption-laden and therefore unacceptable. It is apparent that the APC prevailed in the end. Otherwise, how do we juxtapose a majority of the names on that list with the change mantra? How do you even begin to justify it?

I mean, look at Audu Ogbe. The very affable gentleman has been around since perhaps when the Dead Sea was still in intensive care. He surfaced again during Shehu Shagari’s administration. Gen. Dambazau is on that list too. He narrowly lost out in the National Security Adviser’s race and it would appear he is now being compensated. Dambazau is actually well qualified but his claim to fame was that it was he who, as Army Chief, coordinated the smuggling of ex-president Yar’Adua back into the country under darkness as a hungry cabal took over the affairs of the country in those uncertain days. Aisha Al-Hassan is being compensated too for losing a close run election in Taraba State. Same thing for former CPC governorship candidate in Oyo state, Adebayo Shittu, a chap not too many people have too many good things to say about. Then there are folks like Rotimi Amaechi, Chris Ngige, Lai Mohammed, etc, etc. Many Nigerian ex-this, ex-that. So many ex-governors and deputy governor.

I am not sure that many Nigerians saw this coming at all and I’m convinced that this couldn’t have been what President Buhari had in mind either. Where are the younger generation - the people with the new ideas and new methodologies? Where are the technocrats? In short, where is the change and where are the change agents?

Then there is another aspect: All of this bring into sharper focus why the Senate President, Bukola Saraki was dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal at this time. It appears Saraki (and by extension, the Senate) is being softened up to allow for easy passage of these ministerial nominees. It looks like the APC does not want too much scrutiny of these nominees, it does not want robust questioning of these people as they obviously seem incongruous to the change agenda.

Again, to aid easy passage at the Senate, the government has continued the cynical and highly unsatisfactory tradition of not designating initial ministerial offices to individual nominees.

Politicians are always like this; anticipating stuff. Strategising and planning ahead accordingly. But it is almost always unhelpful things that are well strategized politically in Nigeria. It will be interesting to see how far and how thorough the Senators go in their screening of these nominees.

Politicians are not known for their altruism. Many of our own here view their participation and contribution purely as investment. It’s payback time, which, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But if Party faithfuls, major campaign financiers and other such persons must be compensated, they could or ought to be compensated with Ambassadorial assignments, Board Chairmanship, and other such fancifully titled but ‘safe’ posts. Ministerial appointments are a bit more serious; they do have more direct impact on the wellbeing of citizens and they can determine the success or failure of administrations.

In the meantime, we wait for the ‘A’ list. I have actually seen a few of them milling around the Transcorp. I can’t say that our appetite had been whetted by the B list, but now, we await Buhari’s own list of ministerial nominees.

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