Agenda for Buhari's ministers

The first Federal Executive Council [FEC] under the Buhari Administration was formally inaugurated last Wednesday with the swearing-in of ministers. President Buhari nominated thirty six ministers in two batches, one from each state of the federation. All 36 of them were confirmed by the Senate. Together with the president, vice president and other key officials, they will now make up the FEC. One controversy that dogged the run up to the council’s inauguration was the issue of whether each of the ministers would have a portfolio. In the end, all the ministers were assigned portfolios. Twenty five of them are senior ministers while 11 others are Ministers of State. Observers and pundits were taken by surprise in several cases and their predictions about which ministers will get what portfolios tuned out to be wrong in several cases. President Buhari said at the ceremony that he assigned square pegs to square holes and that he placed each minister in the portfolio where he rightly belongs. Since it is his prerogative and not that of pundits to assign portfolios to ministers, we respect his judgement in the matter. However, both the ministers and the president must now work hard to justify both the ministerial choices and their assigned portfolios. Some of the ministers may have been disoriented by the discussion in political and media circles about “juicy” and “non-juicy” cabinet portfolios. For anyone who is out to serve his people and his country, there is nothing like a juicy portfolio. Every portfolio is very important and the country will be held back if any one of them fails to discharge its role appreciably. This set of ministers must also watch their steps carefully because all eyes will be on them to see if they are actually the “change agents” we are looking out for. People will watch out to see if they heed the president’s warning not to be flamboyant, to ride in short vehicle convoys, not to drive other road users off the road with their blaring sirens, and to shun waste and avarice. However, time has been lost. It took more than five months to constitute the FEC, precious time during which the country’s governance was at a virtual standstill with ministries and agencies performing only skeletal services and with no capital spending at all. Capital spending could not have been possible without a FEC, since it approves all major contract awards.  We therefore expect all the ministers to hit the ground running in order to make up for lost time. The first task on their hands is that of the 2016 Federal budget. Ideally, the president should have submitted next year’s budget estimates to the National Assembly in September so that both chambers can pass it into law by December. We understand that work on the budget was being undertaken by various ministries and agencies in the absence of ministers. This is not ideal. As the president’s political representatives in the ministries, ministers are expected to provide solid guidance on the government’s priorities which should become the key features of the budget. In the absence of such political guidance, civil servants could pack the budget with frivolous self-serving items such as cars, offices and office equipment as was noticed under the previous regime. Since his inauguration in May, two areas in which President Buhari has devoted a lot of attention have been fighting Boko Haram insurgents and launching a determined war against corruption. Without doubt these two are the country’s biggest problems. So far, a lot of progress has been made in the anti-Boko Haram war but the effort must not be slackened because the insurgents have shown an ability to regroup once they get some breathing space. As for the anti-corruption war, Buhari’s body language has already injected the fear of God into many wrong doers but in the long run it is system reforms that will curb corruption in a sustainable manner. We should not allow porous systems where individuals siphon away public funds, only to start running after them in exile resorts and foreign hospitals. Experts as well as investors have complained since May that the Buhari regime’s economic direction is not known. It must be unveiled now, not only to guide the budget but also to enable investors and companies to make their own plans. The Buhari regime must make key decisions about how to shore up government revenue in the face of low oil prices, whether to retain fuel subsidy payments, what to do with the refineries, how to proceed with power sector reforms, whether to accept further naira devaluation, whether or not to proceed with passage of the PIB and a host of other economic and business questions. In other spheres of life too, the Buhari Administration must spell out its priorities very carefully and in accordance with its campaign promises and the aspirations of its constituents. The Federal Ministries have been marginally reduced from 28 to 25 but the government must still proceed to map out its priority areas very carefully. In what areas does it intend to make the greatest impact in the next four years? Is it education, health, power supply, agriculture, poverty alleviation, industrialisation, transport infrastructure, sports or science and technology? And how? Trying to do a little of everything will guarantee that after four years, the regime may have little to show in terms of appreciable impact in any area.  In conclusion, we congratulate the new ministers on their inauguration. We wish to remind them that Nigerians’ expectations from them are very high so they must work much harder to justify these expectations. We wish them luck.