Nigerians have called on President Bola Tinubu to embark on replacement of his ministers and not only reshuffling them.
According to them, mere switching of ministries for his cabinet members would not make any desired change, declaring that his team lacks technocrats.
In their separate reactions to the planned cabinet shape-up, the analysts described the ministers as “round pegs in square holes”, claiming that over 90 per cent of Tinubu’s cabinet members are unknown to the people of the country and that they parade almost empty scorecards.
They asked President Tinubu to replace them out rightly and also ensure that he (Tinubu) desists from being the nation’s Minister of Petroleum.
A public affairs analyst, Shola Isola, said the current Tinubu’s ministers may go down in history as the worst cabinet ever produced in the country.
“We only know that there are ministers but we don’t know them.
We hardly hear of whatever they are doing, that is if they are really doing anything. Like Dele Alake (Minister of Solid Minerals) said that they gave them bags of rice for them to share in their states, till date, I haven’t heard news of the sharing. So, where are those ministers or are there not ministers from these states? Apart from Dave Umahi (Minister of Works), who has been going all around the states and inspecting roads, even when we are yet to see the results of this tour, nothing has been heard from other ministers.
These ministers may go down in history as the worst unless something changes soonest.
“I think there should be cabinet replacement and not reshuffling,” he said.
In his opinion, another analyst, Bamigbola Gbolagunte, believed that President Tinubu put “round pegs in rectangular holes”, wondering, “How do you speak of Dele Alake who has been a journalist all his life and being made Minister of Solid Minerals or is it the President who is supposed to oversee all the ministries put together who made himself minister of petroleum? That is why these ministers are failing woefully in these ministries. Should a president serve as a minister? What has he achieved in that ministry? Aside from David Umahi, Nyesom Wike, and Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, there should not just be reshuffling but replacement.”
“Put technocrats in charge of the oil and gas. Let an expert in the petroleum sector handle the ministry of petroleum so that we can see changes in these sensitive positions. Even the Minister of Information, people barely know him. Redundant persons populate the cabinet and that is why the nation is suffering,” he admonished.
For a human rights activist, Ayo Ologun, “I don’t blame all of these ministers; they were expected to fail ab initio. It is all the fault of the person at the helm of affairs. There are three categories of ministers in Nigeria. There are those that find themselves in office because they know their way. There are those who find themselves in office as ministers for political compensation and patronage, there are those who were appointed into office just to have them in rather than out.
“Are you telling me that we cannot go back to the days of Obasanjo where competent hands, technocrats were put into offices and they were not handicapped to perform?”
