President Muhammadu Buhari finally swore in his full complement of 36 ministers on Wednesday, November 11.
Predictably, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders have expressed reservations about some of them as uninspiring ministers. Contrarily, PDP’s very inspiring ministers four years ago ended up collapsing the economy, piled up the national debt, looted the treasury and spread hardship widely – and Nigerians voted them out.
Nevertheless, Buhari is confident that the ministers are the most competent and highly qualified men and women with records of performance and fairly clean hands he could get.
Unless anyone has evidence to the contrary, including evidence of corruption in public office, we would accept his evaluation that these are the round pegs for the round holes dug to solve the multifaceted problems which bog down the country.
Buhari’s Media Adviser, Femi Adesina, affirmed that the government is now ready to hit the ground at full speed. But we have our reservations.
Even if the executive is on the starting blocks, the comedy of the absurd playing out in the National Assembly (NASS) does not give us hope that the legislative support the government needs for good governance will be provided.
It is about time NASS leaders, as the most important arm of the presidential system, called their distracting colleagues to order. The principal officers’ elections of June 8, 2015 are history. Whether Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila were anointed party candidates or not is neither known to the Constitution nor relevant anymore.
Nigerians elected the lawmakers in both Chambers to legislate for good governance. They are not to form cliques to fight for principal offices or committee memberships.
Failure to get legislative posts should not make proceedings degenerate into disruptive fisticuffs while legislators throw up childish tantrums to rationalise their failings. The NASS is no arena for playing out godfathers’ daydreams and fantasies of relevance.
If the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is too impotent to call its disruptive legislators to order, the NASS leadership has the duty to sanction them.
For instance, the lawmakers are currently embroiled in the scandalous national shame of fighting over “juicy committee memberships” in an era of anti-corruption combat.
That implies fighting over perquisites provided by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) they oversee whose executives waste capital budgets to freeload lawmakers and their guests (perhaps families, too) with food, drinks, entertainment, hotel accommodation, and travel tickets around the world, among other demands.
The problems confronting the government are too huge to waste any more time on legislative frivolities. Abuja has to face developmental challenges especially the collapsed education sector.
The economy is prostrate with dependence on crude oil export whose price has bottomed out, Boko Haram insurgency, insecurity induced by farmers and herdsmen’s clashes, murderous ethnic militias, kidnappers, robbers, et cetera; aggravated by youth unemployment which feeds on the criminality. E-fraudsters are on the rampage in banks.
Back to the cabinet. The sages advise that one does not overload one’s donkey to kill it – or one carries one’s own load. Contractions and mergers of ministries should not lead to costly non-performance.
Power, Works and Housing portfolios for former Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, is so huge that we are concerned about one minister’s capacity to cope with it let alone deliver effectively.
Rotimi Amaechi faces a similar, if less onerous burden, at Transportation.
Audu Ogbe has to meet farmers’ needs while promoting Agriculture as the number one alternative to oil. Which means providing inputs such as improved seedlings, fertilisers, and herbicides must move in tandem with construction of small irrigation dams to minimise dependence on rain-fed agriculture.
Then he has to manage a food chain which eliminates post-harvest losses and encourages processing to boost food security and national self-sufficiency while creating multi-jobs to absorb the unemployed youth.
Similarly, Kayode Fayemi has to reduce the gestation period of solid minerals exploration and exploitation to short and medium term to absorb labour while producing wealth.
The road ahead is not only arduous. It is hazardous with the potential for failure staring Nigeria in the face if Buhari and his cabinet fail to muster enough energy to run what could best be described as a marathon distance at the speed of sprinters.