Buhari and his ministers

IN what appeared to be his first real cabinet reshuffle, albeit a minor one, President Muhammadu Buhari sacked two members of his cabinet and moved two others to replace them last week. That was the first real cabinet reshuffle in the over six years that he has been in the saddle, even though there has hardly been any areas of governance where official performance has been up to par since the inception of his administration. For the duo of Mohammed Nanono, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Saleh Mamman, his counterpart in the Ministry of Power, said to be Buhari’s long-time allies,  to have been given the boot, then their performances must have been so terribly awful that the president could no longer  cover for them as he is wont to do.

Under the Buhari administration, political appointees, especially his loyalists, have continued to enjoy security of tenure not necessarily because of their outstanding contributions to the delivery of good governance but because of their loyalty to him. President Buhari would appear to place a higher premium on the  loyalty of his aides to him than their performances of the duties assigned to them. This mentality might be a carryover from the military where he cut his teeth as a leader, and where loyalty is the most critical requirement from subordinates. However, this markedly differs from what obtains in a democracy where leaders owe their  allegiance to the country and the  people who voted them into power, and where top-notch delivery of public goods to the citizenry is the barometer by which a good government is measured.

Interestingly, the president predicated the sack of the two ministers on self-review and the need to reinvigorate his cabinet. He cleverly avoided any mention of underperformance, which is  lucid to everyone, except those given to playing the ostrich  in the official circles. While we welcome the cabinet reshuffle, we hasten to say that it was not far-reaching enough. Nigerians know that the cabinet as a whole is not performing, not just the sacked ministers. And if performance, which is the veritable issue, were a criterion, more ministers would have to go.  And not even the official promise that the self-review exercise would be a continuous one is comforting enough, because the administration has a reputation for being  lethargic and slow to act on virtually everything, including  inaugurating  and/or making changes to its cabinet, even when there are compelling reasons to do so.

Some concerned stakeholders are already subjecting the sack of the two ministers to scrutiny to be sure that  it had nothing to do with official sleaze because of what they alleged to be the president’s penchant for relieving corrupt public officials of their duties instead of letting them face the law. Whatever the motive might be for sacking the two ministers, it is evident that their performances  and those of their ilk in the cabinet were underwhelming. President Buhari needs to overhaul his cabinet: cosmetic changes won’t do. A cursory but dispassionate look at the administration’s three prime areas of focus, namely the economy, security and anti-graft war, reveals a dismal showing that ought to have recommended wholesale rejigging of the governance structure before now. While the buck stops at President Buhari’s table, he cannot do it alone: he cannot be everywhere at the same time. Still, he has a duty to provide leadership. There is a sense in which the quality of the leadership provided by the overall leader reflects in performances at different levels of leadership. That is why leaders who want to succeed recruit, within the ambit of the law, passionate and competent individuals as aides to help them in delivering public goods and services to the electorate.

Leadership recruitment should be predicated on competence rather than partisan politics, filial relationship, ethnicity or religion. For instance, what is the business of  the  Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development with building a mosque with N30 million of public funds, especially when he had yet to resolve the much bigger challenges in his constituency like the soaring prices of poultry products arising mainly from scarcity and high cost of maize? In addition to hiring the best hands to work with, devoid of primordial sentiments, a visionary leader is also expected to proactively institute a pragmatic monitoring and evaluation system as well as a feedback mechanism, within or outside of bureaucracy, to ensure that performance at least matches the service level agreement with the electorate, and to raise red flags when negative variance becomes intolerable. Otherwise, the situation tends to become messy when citizens take the initiative from the government to self-regulate.

For instance, the Buhari administration was literally stampeded into sacking the former military service chiefs few months ago when criticism of their obvious lacklustre performances in reining in insecurity in the land reached a  crescendo. That shouldn’t have been the case. The damage done to the system due to the suboptimal performance in official circles is already huge, but this administration can begin to correct the anomalies by ensuring that it puts the feet of the officials assigned to critical functions to the fire in the less than two years at its disposal.  That way, they would be on their toes, brace up to the demands of their offices, and prioritise good governance. The president must provide the right leadership and inspire his ministers and top government functionaries to improve on their performances in order to reduce the pains and anguish of the citizenry. The current level of challenges in the system arising from near absence of governance is too much an albatross to contend with or  bequeath to a new administration.

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