The much-awaited list of ministerial nominees from President Muhammadu Buhari has been delivered to Senate President, Bukola Saraki.
As the president said in his Independence Day nationwide broadcast, the list is the first batch of nominees for Senate screening and hopefully, confirmation.
The rather tardy formation of the cabinet left the vacuum of political offices adequately filled by the permanent secretaries of existing ministries.
Buhari is yet to tidy up the oncoming mergers of some ministries and scrapping of others which duplicate or overlap as recommended by the Steve Orosanye Committee on Civil Service reforms and the Ahmed Jodah Transition Committee.
While we have no reason to doubt the competence and intellectual capacity of permanent secretaries, we still believe the four-months’ delay could have been much shorter. For the parlous state of the economy which was nearly run aground at the Goodluck Jonathan administration demands more accelerated take-off than we have seen.
That is the reason we expect the ministers coming in to be more presbyopic, visionary and proactive than the top civil servants they will head.
Ministers will be doing a disservice to Nigeria and their compatriots if they lack the technocrat’s innovativeness, drive, and intellectual acumen to speed up implementation of the plans, projects and programmes formulated by permanent secretaries who have provided administrative stability to date.
Senators therefore have their work cut out. These virtues are the minimum demands of the exalted offices for which they must screen the nominees.
Saraki has assured that the screening will be thorough and expeditious. Nobody takes a bow and goes according to the Senate tradition.
The precarious state of the stagflationary economy, aggravated by high unemployment especially of youths, demands that Buhari hits the ground running.
By that yardstick, patience becomes a virtue for only the idle rich in a buoyant economy. In the current dire straits of the economy, which may spiral into recession next year, patience is unaffordable luxury.
Buhari in his rather inspiring Independence Day broadcast, the first since inauguration, pledged a methodical and proper way of conducting public affairs in tandem with prudent management of resources to avoid mismanagement, waste and squandering which have plunged Nigeria to its knees.
As the nation claws its way out of the economic doldrums into which corruption and incompetent management have sunk it over the last two decades, screening and confirmation of the right nominees for the right ministries are the irreducible minimum expected from senators if Buhari must walk the talk he promised in his inspiring address.
The only drawback is that portfolios are not assigned to the nominees before screening. Which creates a chicken and egg problem about which comes first.
The time is ripe for the legislature to demand assigning temporary portfolios to nominees to forestall a brilliant lawyer being assigned a highly technical Ministry of Power.
It is heart-warming to hear from Buhari that the government is not complacent with the approximately 5,000mw power supply from the national grid projected by the end of year.
Never mind that they are still holding strategy sessions about the best way to improve power supply in the safest and most cost effective way.
Current contentment with longer power supply should not make the government relax on its oars about the need for more efficient generation, transmission and distribution facilities, including metres, till at least the estimated 25,000mw to 30,000mw threshold is surpassed.
Steps being taken to sanitise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation – and other revenue generating agencies like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigeria Customs Service, and Nigerian Communications Commission – to improve operational efficiency are indispensable moving forward.
Above all, Buhari’s call for prudent housekeeping being needed now more than ever in view of the sharp decline in world market oil prices is inevitable. As he put it, what counts is not so much what accrues but how we manage resources.
In his words, “change does not just happen. You and I and all of us must appreciate that we all have our part to play if we want to bring CHANGE about.
“We must change our lawless habits, our attitude to public office and public trust. To bring about change, we must change ourselves by being law-abiding citizens.”
We do not need to remind Nigerians that good Independence Day addresses by leaders are never in short supply.
What is lacking is the transformation of the great intentions into real achievements for the benefit of the largest majority of citizens of all classes.
Our hope, no matter how forlorn the high expectations, is that a year from now, we would not need to cry over more spilled milk of missed opportunities, misplaced priorities and squandered resources.
Buhari and his cabinet must hit the restart button for change.
By next year, he must harness the collective intellectual power of the cabinet to take all reasonable, legal steps to implement the change agenda to build a strong, virile, productive economy on a democratic society based on the rule of law with full constitutional guarantees for all.