Cabinet Reshuffle As Project

Admittedly, to select about 40
persons as ministers in a country as huge as Nigeria with a population of 140 Million people and where the only source of wealth for many of the people parading themselves as millionaires or billionaires is government cannot be an easy exercise. First, the President and his aides would have to painfully go through bundles and bundles of CVs to identify competent hands.

We must not make any mistake about it, Nigerian politicians may not know how to get many good things done, but they know how to write or commission the writing of good bio data. Of course many of the claims in the CVs would be false a la Toronto and Chicago. If the President does not want to suffer any embarrassment he should ensure that no certified Area Boy or forger is appointed into the cabinet.

Second, in matters of this nature the State Security Service plays a dominant role. They call it security screening. That process, I imagine, must also be a long and enervating one for both the screeners and the screened. A friend who used to advise one of the power brokers in Abuja until recently told me how one of the few sane voices in the last House of Representatives, Uche Onyeagocha, was almost screened out by the SSS.

Indeed a security report was said to have been written showing that he was a member of MASSOB and that it would be dangerous to permit such a fellow to remain in the House of Representatives! There is no point ‘blowing’ grammar, as we say, by asking when has being a member of MASSOB become a crime? The truth is that Uche was not a member of MASSOB. That I know. I do not doubt that he may have sympathy for that organization. Anyhow, security screening also takes time.

What of objections or suggestions from governors, party leaders, militants and Godfathers and mothers. That also contributes to the delay. It is difficult to forget quickly the fate of one of the Honourable Ministers by the name of Orubebe. Some people from his constituency swore that the man would never become an honourable Minister of the Federal Republic. They had their way until, I understand, some militants stepped in. You must be stupid as things stand in this country today to reject the suggestions of the militants. Shortly after the intervention of the militants in his favour, we saw publicized rapprochement between the man and his opponents.

The kitchen cabinet would also have to do its own screening. It is difficult to know the criteria that the close friends and associates of the President use to screen in or out prospective ministers. It is easy to guess that loyalty would be high up on the list.

We see, therefore, that appointing ministers and advisers is not tea party for any President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Nevertheless, the announced, we can no longer call it impending, cabinet reshuffle by the present administration is taking too long to happen. Perhaps it should not have been announced or leaked to the press before now.

The way the administration is going about it, the impression is created that appointing ministers or reshuffling cabinet is a major project on its own, and that is really unfortunate. If the administration cannot show decisiveness within a reasonable time in the matter of selecting ministers, it is difficult to trust it to deliver on its seven point agenda.

Doubtless, it is good not to be hasty in taking decisions. The truth, however, is that decisions not taken within a reasonable time end up being no decisions at all. And what is reasonable, I dare say, has to be measured in this case against the lifespan of the administration. To spend months on end to choose or remove ministers in a tenure of four years appears to me, with the greatest respect, indefensible.

My appeal therefore is that we should have the cabinet change now or we stop further discussions on it for many of the Ministers, particularly, those who are not sure of being reappointed have since stopped working.

CRISIS OF CAPITALISM DEEPENS
I was watching the CNN news a few days ago and I saw something really amusing. There was a newspaper headline indicating that banks in the US were to come under Federal control or something to the like effect. I laughed. I laughed because our half-baked capitalists still delude themselves by saying that government has no business in business.

Aping their counterparts in the US, they are already fashioning out their own ‘bail out’ programme.

Six banks have been selected to contribute N600 billion to stabilize the market. Of course, this is an imposition on the shareholders of those banks who were not consulted. It raises serious issues of corporate governance.

In other countries all the Directors of those banks would be removed at an extra ordinary General Meeting for agreeing to contribute to a bail out that was never discussed by the shareholders. It is conduct such as this that created the crisis in the first place.

Well I am happy that they are scared of asking that public funds be used for the bail out here as their brothers and sisters are doing in the US. They know that we will have none of that. They had better not tried it.