By Valentine Amanze
At the Eagle Square in Abuja on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, amidst tight security, President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn into power for a second-term in office as Nigerian president.
Buhari did not make any speech as he left the venue immediately after inspecting the guards of honour and acknowledging cheers from the crowd.
In May 22, 2019 South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was sworn into power. The following day, he announced his cabinet, with a promise to reviving the country’s economy and fighting corruption. Since then the South African economy has been on a steady rise.
While Ramaphosa was announcing his cabinet the following day he was sworn into power, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari jetted out of the country the same day he took the oath of office for a meeting in Saudi Arabia.
That was the first shocker and disappointment for many of his die-hard supporters, who gave flimsy excuse that his first tenure was a learning process and not his inability to meet the expectation of Nigerians.
For the president’s critics, it was normal and typical of him to lead without communication. Let his faithful talk for him; irrespective of its consequencies to the nation.
In his first tenure, which began in 2015, the president worked without ministers for six months. And when he finally had his cabinet, Nigerians were not surprised.
No one, except of course, a non-Nigerian, will expect anything different from those who helped him to grow the nation’s debt to $27 trillion.
The appointments so far made in the Central Bank of Nigeria and those in the presidency could attest to the president’s mindset.
On July 5, he reappointed Mr Abba Kyari as his Chief of Staff, as well as Mr. Boss Mustapha as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).
The President’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, however, said both appointments took effect from May 29, 2019.
Before then, the president had retained all his service chiefs even with high level insecurity in Nigeria.
But investors and stakeholders are worried over the delay in announcing the new cabinet. Will Nigerians wait for another six months or more for the president to hit the ground running? Probably, yes. Last week, while the waiting game continued, President Buhari gave the impression that the list was not ready.
Addressing the leadership of the National Assembly during a dinner on Thursday night in Abuja, Buhari said that he was under pressure to unveil his ministerial nominees.
His words:
“I am very much aware about it and I am under tremendous pressure on it.
“The last cabinet which I had, most of them, a majority of them I didn’t know.
“I had to accept their names and recommendation from the party. I worked with them for three and a half years.”
The President, however, explained that the delay was to nominate people he knows personally and can work with.
To many of his critics, the president has justified their allegation that he practices nepotism and tribalism.
Must the president personally know the names of more than 200 million Nigerians before he appoints 40 or less of them as ministers? Who is pressurizing him? So, after three and half years, the president could not give a correct assessment or score card of any member of his last cabinet.
I don’t believe that Buhari is seriously searching for ministers six months after his “re-election.’’ What happened to his party organogram? Must all his cabinet be members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)?
The interest of Nigeria must take precedence in whatever decision the president makes.
The former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, is rated high in economy because he utilized the best brain in the country irrespective of tribe and political considerations.
It was Obasanjo’s leadership that produced Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dr Oby Ezekwesili and many others, who found the solution to the nation’s mounting foreign debt.
The President should now be thinking beyond the box and reach out to people with fresh ideas of how to move the country forward. Going back to the era of recycling old friends will be disastrous to his government.
Already, the Labour Party has said that the delay in forming a ministerial cabinet was a huge cost to the growth and development of the country.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Innocent Laggi, said that the country was suffering from lack of essential services, considering the fact that without the ministers, nothing happens.
“It’s a huge cost; this is a country of over 200 million people, what we are doing is having a huge machine and it’s not being moved. It takes more than 37 ministers to get this country working.
“This is a cost to the country and unfortunately, in Nigeria, nobody values time, so we can just stay by and as long as the President gets what he wants in office, the country can be punished from lack of services that are supposed to have been provided by the government and that can’t be done through one man.
“Everybody knows that it is FEC that approves things to happen. All civil servants know that right now, without ministers, there is nothing going on in this country.”
Buhari has no reason to fail; after all his party has given him massive support to succeed including influencing the emergence of the leadership of the National Assembly. This is unlike his first tenure when he complained of hostile leadership at the National Assembly.
The earlier the president submits his ministerial list the better for the country’s rconomy. Let him know that many states are waiting for him to do so before they form their own cabinet.
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