Incredible as it may sound; there is no doubt that the Buhari administration has been acutely undermined by a coterie of incompetent ministers; a reason why it is underperforming. It is, indeed, pathetic that after 18 months in office, 27 of the 36 states currently owe workers salaries; some up to eight months. Life is hard, and to most Nigerians, the change-promising APC government is not delivering on its campaign promises. It was high time the president fires ministers who are laggards in the performance of their duties. Nigerians are tired hearing how bad the past administration was. That, after all, was why they voted for Buhari. If the president would ever deliver on his promises, he must demonstrate a capacity and the will to rise to the occasion. For whether a president succeeds or fails is a function of the type of cabinet he has assembled. The president must stop the lamentations and begin not only the re-organization but also the inspiration of a true Nigeria.
As the pangs of the dire economic situation are being felt everywhere, the administration’s performance has been defined by the parlous state of the economy. The World Bank ranked Nigeria a dismal 181 out of 189 countries surveyed for “Ease of doing Business”. This means despite hundreds of seminars and panel reports on how to improve Nigeria’s business climate, nothing has changed. The point must be emphasized that Nigerians voted for change, not merely as an end itself, but as a means to achieve a comprehensive improvement in governance and their quality of life. Therefore, Buhari must concentrate on leading Nigeria at a time when the economy requires creativity and resourceful leadership instead of whining. Nigerians cannot change the past, but their President should galvanize the country into wealth-creating productivity, instead of wasting precious time blaming past administrations for the current woes of the country. Having run this country once, Buhari ought to understand its complexities as well as the urgent need to get the nation back on track. Certainly, this is what Nigerians elected him to do.
Unfortunately, Buhari has failed to elaborate a central vision for the country, let alone think through and act decisively on how to cut the cost of governance. A situation, where 75% of the budget is recurrent expenditure, is unconscionable and unsustainable. There are too many ministries, departments and agencies that drain the treasury, and add no value to government performance. And while businesses are shutting down, while unemployment is rising, and incessant fuel crisis and epileptic power supply persists; Mr. President has mindlessly continued his foreign escapades, behaving like the legendary Emperor Nero who went feasting and merry-making while Rome was on fire.
The most telling evidence of the unprecedented passiveness and lack of strategic direction by this administration is the disgraceful and shameful 2016 padded budget. Budget and Planning Minister Udoma Udo Udoma recently told a cabinet retreat that the President’s Economic Management Team plans a fiscal stimulus out of the present economic recession via a plan to injection an estimated $15 billion through asset sales, advance licence renewal fees, infrastructure concessioning, among other measures, to reduce the funding gap. Clearly Udoma betrays a lack of understanding of what constitutes a country’s external reserves as well as a market reflective exchange rate mechanism by celebrating the plunging value of the naira for bringing about “exchange rate gains (money illusion) and an increase in naira proceeds in funding the 2016 budget thus helping us pay salaries and keep the state running” in total oblivion of galloping inflation and weak demand.
Education, the key to innovation and development, has been on a free fall and long settled issues such as university autonomy have been disrupted with impunity by the president himself. Even when Buhari apologized for arbitrarily dissolving some university governing councils and appointing vice chancellors in violation of the law, the president did not correct the anomaly by reversing his illegal decision. And the minister who induced the president into error has no shame to resign, and has not been fired for the national embarrassment. The aviation sector is in crisis and domestic airlines are daily closing shops just as foreign airlines flee Nigeria. Yet, there has been no sense of urgency from the Aviation minister, even as airlines continue to operate flying coffins.
Health wise, there has not been any major policy shift and Nigerian hospitals remain consulting clinics. Buhari himself set a new record in medical tourism, when he traveled abroad to treat a minor ear infection. The government’s performance is not eliciting cheery news anywhere, not even in agriculture where the minister is more interested in seminars and talk-shops. The dilapidated road infrastructure is a shameful eyesore that has even gone viral on social media, yet the minister contends himself with empty promises. There has been no improvement in the convoluted energy sector. On security, despite indications that Boko Haram is weakened, the storm is not yet over. The anti-graft war is superficial without institutions to sustain the fight within the public service where corruption is endemic.
Indeed, there seems to be no redemption in the horizon and Nigerians are finding it difficult to understand why the president is so ensconced to mediocrity. Nigeria is blessed with a vast array of highly competent professionals, globally acknowledged as distinguished, persons of honor and integrity. There is, therefore, no reason the country cannot be governed with the best hands except for the wrong disposition of the appointer, on whose desk the buck stops! Buhari must break from past errors and do a major cabinet shake-up. In other words, Buhari should appoint people who understand the system and have what it takes to make the system work. He should keep at arm’s length parvenus, sycophants and opportunists who see appointments as an invitation to “come and chop” instead of an opportunity to serve. What the country deserves at this critical time are statesmen and women of good conscience who are not perverted by the spoils of office but are persuaded by conviction.
Those are people who would look the president in the eye and tell him the bitter truth where his desires and policies are inimical to the public interest. They are those who merely by looking at the president’s face know his pains and what to do to ease the pain in the interest of the nation. Those attributes come with experience, discipline, patriotism, altruism and competence. Very few in the cabinet are imbued with these virtues. Greed, self-centeredness, myopism, dishonesty, crude incompetence and lust for the trappings of power and the spoils of office, all amounting to self-aggrandizement are what many have in abundance. What they are capable of contributing to the growth of the nation, nay the enrichment of the Nigerian people counts for nothing.
As the CEO of the federation, the president has the right to hire and fire his appointees at will. This right is constitutionally guaranteed and consistent with common sense. It is just that Nigerians bear the brunt of such poor choices any time he hires the wrong set of people. That is why his right to hire must be exercised with circumspection and great introspection. He owes Nigerians good governance as a matter of obligation and social contract. So, his right to hire is curtailed by the right of Nigerians to be governed well, responsibly and productively. Because in the ultimate, Nigerians pay the salary of Mr. President and his appointees and they are the ones who must be satisfied with their performance.
