- Say majority have performed below expectations, don’t deserve their portfolios
- President is determined, his lieutenants are not – Analysts
- Experts urge president to use politicians to executive policies, not technocrats
Nigerians have asked President Bola Tinubu to make real his threat of sacking any of his ministers who fail to perform in office.
This request came as the citizens flayed most of the ministers for allegedly contributing in plunging the country into economic hardship, insecurity and poverty.
They said some key ministers have performed below expectations and did not deserve their portfolios.
Recall that some six months ago, August 21, 2023 to be precise, President Tinubu swore in 45 ministers who were earlier cleared by the Senate.
At a retreat organized for the ministers thereafter, President Tinubu warned that he would sack ministers who fail to perform their duties.
He said that they will be assessed and ministers will be dropped if they don’t perform.
Rating the performance of the ministers, especially those in Economic, Education, Health, Security and Agriculture sectors, Nigerians in their separate interviews with The Point, said they were yet to feel the positive efforts of the ministers, adding that the President was yet to deliver on his promise of making life better and easier for them.
Commenting on the performance of the ministers in the last six months, the Managing Partner, Stonewaters Law Chamber, Akin Olugbuyiro, said none of the ministers are outstanding.
“No one among them is outstanding. If I were the President, I would sack them all.”
Olugbuyiro who is a member of the All Progressive Congress and a member of the Tinubu Presidential Campaign team, said it was expected of the President to cut his cabinet when he was sworn in on May 29. He alleged that most of the ministerial nominees were not competent, not having the requisite experience to perform in their respective offices.
His words, “One would have expected the President to lead by example, feeling the pains of Nigerians. I don’t expect him as a president to earn a salary in this present situation. The Vice President should not also earn a salary which the ministers should have a 50% salary cut as well as all government appointees. That is a way to show that they feel the pain of the people and that they are ready to effect the Renewed Hope they are talking about.”
Assessing the performance of some key Ministries, Olugbuyiro said all the major ministries had underperformed.
“For instance, look at the Ministry of Interior where we have Bunmi Tunji-Ojo, who is a friend and younger brother. No doubt, he is a good person but what experience does he have for the President to have appointed him to this ministry?”
“We have abandoned competent people for incompetent people and that is the result we are getting now”
He queried, “What has changed in the passport office since he became a minister? Since January, I have applied for a passport for myself and my family, but it is not yet available.
Also speaking about another of his professional colleague in the Aviation Ministry, Festus Keyamo, he said, “Beyond the cosmetic look of the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos, the ministry is not catering to the need of the average Nigerians as they have been priced out as the average Nigerian can no longer afford to fly.”
In the case of the Humanitarian Ministry, he said, “Betta Edu, the Minister in charge of that Ministry, until when she was suspended from office had nothing to offer because she lacked the capacity.”
“Before the appointment of Edu, she was the National Women Leader of APC. Her appointment was to compensate her for her role in helping the President to win.
“We have Nigerians that can do the job as it requires logistics and expertise to be able to cater to the welfare of Nigerians. It is not a job to pay back politicians. People like Edu should have been given party jobs and not ministerial appointments.”
For the Works Ministry, he said jobs have slowed down since the former Minister, Babatunde Fashola, left the office.
“We have abandoned competent people for incompetent people and that is the result we are getting now. But I never envisaged that this government will have problems in getting the right people to handle the different ministerial offices,” the legal practitioner added.
Capturing the mood of Nigerians, he said, “Nigerians are not happy with this administration. Even the friends of the President are no longer happy with him because of the present suffering in the land. This calls for a sober reflection for the President.”
Speaking on the way forward, the Founding Partner at Stonewaters Law firm said, “The President must take tough decisions to salvage the present situation. He must flag the red card at the ministers that have failed to perform so far and he must carefully look for competent hands to replace them.
“Though things had been bad before this administration came into office, the appointments made by Tinubu have worsened the situation in the country and he must change the narratives if he must achieve the Renewed Hope he is talking about.”
A clergyman, Bishop Seun Adeoye, said all ministers have failed and that they deserved to be shown the way out.
He, however, opined that some policies of the President might have prevented the ministers from giving their best.
“Rating our ministers is not a big task for anyone because we are all feeling the heat in this country. Not until things start getting better in this country, we cannot say that any minister or even the president has performed well. The truth is that any policy of any ministry that has not translated into something concrete that is capable of making Nigerians well fed, happy and secure cannot be called an achievement.
“In Nigeria today, we rarely see anything good to ascribe to any minister. Is it the economy? We all know what the dollar is saying to the naira now and how bastardized the economy of the nation has been. We are suffering from acute hunger and the ministry of agriculture has not done anything tangible to address it. Should we mention security? It is no longer news that banditry, terrorism, kidnapping and killings have become a daily occurrence and this is a nation that has a Minister of Defence and the National Security Adviser,” he noted.
In his opinion, the chairman of Trade Union Congress in Osun State, Bimbo Fasasi, said “The ministers have not performed to our expectations.”
A public affairs analyst, Gbenga Mudashiru said the government has failed to make available to citizens things that would make life more meaningful for them.
For him, the ministers have not performed up to expectations because, “the easiest way for the leaders to touch the lives of every Nigerian is fuel, power, and education. When you look at these three that I have mentioned, you will see that this administration has not done anything significant on any of them. They are making the wrong policies.”
Commenting on the development, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, said the performance review of the ministers should not be the priority of the government as the nation was in a dire strait.
He stated, “This President should be one in a hurry. This country is battered and tattered. The country is bleeding. The people are downtrodden.
There is anger and melancholy. There is poverty. There is agony. Nigerians are crying and in abject penury. There is gnashing of teeth across the divides in Nigeria.
“To me, it is a case of ‘Physician heal thyself’ as the President is trying to heal the ministries. To assess a minister is to know the deliverables. What benchmark did the President set when he appointed the ministers? What was in the All Progressives Congress manifesto as to their deliverables?
“Since the ministers were sworn in more than six months ago, what have they done? If we take the Ministry of Works, for instance, it will be easy to assess how many roads have been constructed or started or earmarked for commencement. But, for other ministries like special duties; how will they be assessed?
“As for the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Humanitarian Affairs, how will they assess them? Where is all the money that has been pumped to alleviate poverty? Why is there so much poverty in the land? What number of Nigerians has been brought out of poverty? What are the verifiable indices to show that this has been done? I have already seen some ministers who are not performing at all. Some of them are just there like onlookers.”
Another SAN, Yomi Alliyu, faulted the move, saying, “In the first instance, I don’t see how anyone will assess a minister. The criteria are bound to be subjective rather than objective. This is because ministers are not really the ones working in the ministries. They are just policymakers.
The civil servants are the ones who will implement policies. In that instance, it is the members of the public who can assess whether a minister is working or not.
“A minister could be hyperactive and corrupt. We have seen ministers use their former companies as pipes to siphon government money from another ministry and some of them are still serving.
“You will not say because a minister has some media hype, he will score well and perform. Sometimes, it is not the people that you hear of who are the performers in this country. Nobody can evaluate any minister other than members of the public.”
Also reacting, another SAN, Ebun Adegboruwa, stated that it was PresidentTinubu himself who needed to be assessed.
“It is the President himself who needs an assessment. The ministers have no direct responsibility to the people of Nigeria. They were not the ones elected. The buck stops on the President’s table. Is it for the insecurity, inflation, or the collapse of the exchange and forex regime?” he queried.
The Director of Youths for Change, Taiwo Oyayinka, urged the President to ensure the dismissal of underperforming ministers as he had earlier promised.
He said, “President Tinubu promised us last year that ministers who underperform would be dismissed; he should stand by this charge. Corrupt ministers should be flushed out of the system.
“Such an action will serve as a deterrent to others. There should be no sacred cow in power. All those found culpable should be suspended or dismissed.”
An elder statesman, Ambrose Ezewunwa, described most ministers in President Tinubu’s administration as wayfaring politicians who saw their appointments as a call to enrich themselves and their families at the detriment of the entire Nigerian citizenry.
Ezewunwa, a retired civil servant and politician said the country is facing hardship in every facet of life because those the President brought in to run his government with him do not have the same vision with him.
He said those who share the President’s vision are in the minority.
“You can assess the ministers with the state of the nation. In government, the President is the head but ministers are the other sensitive parts of the body. The head can’t move to anywhere except other parts of the body whose responsibility it is to take or carry the head where it is supposed to move to do their work. When you check the state of our nation, you don’t need anybody to tell you that nothing is working and if we agree that nothing is working then we are saying the ministers have failed the President’s trust he had before giving them the position. Before they took over power from Buhari, they knew what was on ground and failure to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians is a confirmation that they are there for themselves or they had nothing to offer.
“The Minister of Finance was celebrated as a technocrat when he was appointed but what I don’t know is whether those who celebrated him are still celebrating him. Under his nose our naira has become like a tissue paper. It’s heartbreaking. My simple contribution to President Tinubu is that he should carry out a total surgery on his cabinet. If it takes begging those illustrious sons and daughters of Nigeria who have proven records, no matter where they are and the part of the country they came from, bring them into his cabinet. Former President Obasanjo did it and achieved the record no President after him has attempted to get close to.
“There’s no minister in this cabinet that deserves to remain if Tinubu is genuine with his Renewed Hope for Nigeria and Nigerians. The only person who has shown guts to walk the talk is Wike, and that is because he has taken the bull by the horns and not talking without anything to do about the situation,” he said.
Corroborating, a Kano based retired Director from the Federal Capital Territory Administration, who preferred anonymity said the appointment of ministers by President Tinubu was done without due diligence on their persons and capability.
He said, “The country is decaying on a fast stride because the ministers still think they are APC representatives and serving their party. They are yet to realize that they have a responsibility to Nigerians. Imagine a minister telling Nigerians that President Tinubu’s administration is still young and that it inherited many problems from the previous administration. Which was the previous administration, APC administration under former President Muhammadu Buhari. They still believe that PDP’s administration under Jonathan of over nine years is the problem of Nigeria. It’s a shame. President Tinubu should drop all of them and carry out a thorough due diligence to appoint new ones otherwise, they will help him to turn Nigeria worse than Venezuela. Nothing is working in Nigeria. We can’t join these ministers to continue to pretend. How much is naira to a dollar? A bag of rice costs between N65, 000 and N72000. Yam, beans, garri, potatoes, name them are now no go areas for the poor masses who are not sure of a single meal in a day. It’s terrible that Tinubu is retaining these people as ministers.”
A political scientist, Moyo Jaji, said there was no minister he would single out for praise and that all have been performing well below par.
Jaji blamed the immediate past government for the current economic hardship being experienced; stressing that the Buhari government was not bothered about the way Nigeria was structured.
“The government is recognizing technocrats as opposed to politicians who did all the groundwork for them.”
He explained that Tinubu wants to “bell the cat” but would not say the same about the president’s lieutenants.
“For now, I do not think there is any minister I will single out for praise because the mood out there is very negative with regards to the present government. Not because the government is not working but because the government has been overwhelmed with propaganda.
“Yes, the country is hard. Everyone is feeling the pinch of the economic policies of the present government which are necessary but I don’t think our people (supporters of the president) know how to get across to the larger society (to address that propaganda against the government).
“The past government was not bothered about the way Nigeria is structured. Everybody goes into government just for whatever he or she can do for four years, and if necessary, extend it to eight years, and then go away without attacking the fundamental problems of the society.
“But this time around, we have a president who wants to bell the cat, and from his attitude and utterances, one will say he is determined. But I cannot say that about his lieutenants and that has to do with the ministers.
“Because if they were doing well, it would reflect in the society and the kind of disenchantment we are facing now will not be there. So, to some extent, I do not think the ministers have justified the confidence reposed in them by the president.
“The ministers are supposed to hit the ground running but everything we are hearing now is that one has embezzled money, another has not followed due process and a certain amount of money is missing, and yet another has been suspended and whatnot.
“Meanwhile, people are very hungry in the larger society. So, to that extent, I don’t think the ministers are complementing the efforts of the president.”
Jaji said the noisiest among the ministers was the FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, and that apart from what he does (making noise), there was nothing else about the former Rivers State governor.
Concerning the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who has liberalised the passport application process, Jaji said it (passport application) was not the major issue Nigerians were facing.
Whether he wants some of the ministers to get the boot or be given more time, Jaji said, “The tendency is there that if you sack them, you will not find who to replace them with.”
Jaji also said that the recognition of technocrats, who make up a substantial chunk of the ministers, as opposed to politicians who did all the groundwork for the government to come to power, should be discouraged.
He said, “The government is recognizing technocrats as opposed to politicians who did all the groundwork for them. Do technocrats know the feelings of the people? Politicians are very close to the people but a technocrat who does not know where you hold your ward meeting is now preferred.
“You should let those who understand the problem of the society, who were there and sold the ideas of the party to the electorate, to be the executioners of the programmes of the party when it comes to power.
“Technocrats are not grounded. They don’t know the problems of society. And yes, intellectually, they might be good but that is not good enough.
“You must put people who are street-wise, who understand the feelings of the people and will know how to respond to the yearnings of the people. That is exactly what is lacking now.”
