Aso Rock while Nigerians awaited Buhari’s ministerial list

President Muhammadu Buhari had earlier stated his intention to populate his cabinet with only individuals known to him, but that did not deter lobbyists from looking for a bite in the pie. The president’s long delay in constituting the cabinet had given room for his supporters to flaunt their credentials in the hope of catching his attention and gaining some slots. Various groups, particularly those who claimed to have worked for Buhari’s re-election and therefore felt a sense of ownership of the administration, believed their time had come.

Some of such groups that came to mount pressure on the president to be considered for appointments were the Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO), whose coordinator is Malam Danladi Pasali, and the Muhammadu Buhari/Osinbajo (MBO) Dynamic Support Group, led by Usman Ibrahim. Ibrahim was open about the group’s mission when they met the President recently and sought to dramatise how much the group had sacrificed for his sake. He was keen to point out that many of his group members had passed on while others had suffered permanent disability in the course of working for the realisation of the president’s ambition. According to him, some members of MBO were attacked in Abuja and narrowly escaped death while the group also lost the Kwara State coordinator and the Bayelsa State woman leader. Similarly, Ogun, Aba, and Bayelsa state coordinators, he informed, were yet to recover from the beating they received during the elections.

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Ibrahim reminded the president that they were given no money to campaign. But the members were never deterred as they ensured their members were fully on the ground. He suggested that it was payback time and the members were ready to make themselves available as there were among them, qualified professionals that had excelled in various fields of endeavours that would impact the “next level” administration positively. “We, therefore, request that you give consideration to these noble men and women. We promise that we will never let you down,” he added.

Other groups and individual politicians, including former governors, former ministers and members of the National Assembly had visited the seat of power often in the guise of coming to congratulate the president on his re-election, but the real mission ostensibly being to lobby for a position as a minister of the federal republic. Even traditional rulers, particularly from Kogi State, came to ask the president for more ministerial slots for their state. The Kogi royal fathers blatantly demanded the key portfolio of finance minister as a compensation for the less critical positions, minister of state, their sons had occupied in the previous federal cabinet.

The endless stream of visitors had kept an otherwise serene president busy in the last few weeks. The movement to Aso Rock seemed to have been encouraged by his apparent willingness to welcome anyone claiming to have worked in his campaign. Despite the absence of ministers, the presidential villa had thus continued to be a beehive of activities, though it had very little to do with the business of governance.

For about two months, the villa had been starved of the presence of cabinet members, the only set of Nigerians that seemed to have the freedom to roam the seat of power at will. The ritualistic meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) seemed a distant memory. This meant that no new memo was considered and approved, and therefore, no new projects were planned for immediate implementation. Ministers are the ones that can see the president at a short notice because it is either that Buhari himself summoned them if they had memos, contractors, or some other urgent issues to bring to his attention. This ceased.

The presidency maintained that not constituting the cabinet did not leave a vacuum in the running of government as the permanent secretaries, who are the engine rooms of ministries, had continued their work unhindered. Apart from their statutory responsibilities, they were performing the roles of ministers and representing the president at engagements, both at home and abroad.

Observers have wondered why, again, it took the president so long to reconstitute his cabinet after keeping Nigerians waiting for six months in 2015 to seek out credible and competent hands only to come up with familiar figures that could have been picked in the twinkling of an eye. He had said he wanted the people he could personally vouch for. Nigerians expected that from the date of his re-election, nearly five months ago, he should have built his list of such people for transmission to the Senate upon his proclamation of the ninth National Assembly.

For a president who previously declared that ministers were noise makers, before Tuesday, Buhari did not seem to be in a hurry because he did not give any hint as to when he would send the list to the lawmakers who were themselves very anxious because that had to proceed on their annual recess. Senate President Ahmad Lawan was confident that the list would have been forwarded and confirmed by now but was forced to recant his earlier position by saying that his remark did not suggest certainty of time.