Taught time are waiting: Fashola, Adeosun, Dan-Ali, Kachikwu,

The new ministers President Muhammadu Buhari swore in last week have tough hurdles to clear as they settle down to meet the change expectations of the president and the general public, experts the Daily Trust spoke with over the weekend unanimously affirmed.  Particularly identified are the key ministries of Finance, Defence and Petroleum, as well as that of Power, Works & Housing.   Distributing the portfolios last Wednesday, President Buhari handed the Finance ministry to Mrs Kemi Adeosun, while Mansur Dan-Ali, a retired Brigadier-general, will oversee Defence. The president himself hugs the Petroleum ministry to his chest for direct supervision, although the incumbent Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Continued from page 1  Dr Ibe Kachikwu, will actually be running the ministry as Minister of State.     The highlight of the portfolio distribution was immediate past governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, who President Buhari has saddled with the responsibility of ministering the three-odd combination of the power, works and housing sectors. A chartered accountant, economist and Chief Executive of Global Analytics Consulting Limited, Mr Tope Fasua, saw it as too much an enormous responsibility for one man. Mrs Adeosun is assuming office to fix an economy that even Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele had admitted may soon run into recession if not injected a quick fix. At present, all the macroeconomic factors of exchange, inflation and lending rates are down. With the price of oil, which has for many years remained the nation’s monocultural cash cow, hovering around $50 per barrel from a high of $115 in June 2014 and not offering any hope of a useful rise soon, the new Finance Minister has a difficult task of generating appreciable revenue to tackle the nation’s many growth and developmental problems, as well as issues of salary payments and debts.  As respected global financial analyst, Goldman Sachs forecast that global oil price is not likely to rise remarkably above $50 per barrel till 2019, the Rivers State Chairman of the Trade Union Congress, Comrade Hyginus Chika Onuegbu last week raised a poser for the Buhari administration on how Nigeria would get out of the woods considering the fact that it didn’t seem Nigeria ever prepared for the current downturn.  “For instance, Nigeria has just only $2 billion in excess crude account which reports say may soon be shared; less than $30bn in external reserves; owes over $60bn even as many states in the country continue to seek for loans and bailout funds to pay workers salary,” Onuegbu said.  Mr Fasua said Mrs Adeosun’s success would depend on her own philosophy on spending prioritisation, and looking inwards on issues like entrepreneurship. He said the Finance Minister’s job is cut out for her, with Buhari’s own leadership philosophy and discipline ensuring she gets things done where otherwise policy implementation and human resource management would be difficult.  The Defence minister will be facing, in the short term, the tough task of ensuring the military routs the Boko Haram insurgents by December 2015, as promised Nigerians by the president. Former Kano State military administrator, retired colonel, Aminu Isa Kontagora, believed Dan Ali’s assignment may not be as knotty to him as many fear as the new Defence Minister “is an experienced officer who knows the secret of military success and will implement that to achieve the desired objectives.” Kontagora confidently assured, “I have confidence in him. He will meet the Commander-in-Chief’s deadline. All he needs to do is to work closely with service chiefs to achieve the goal.” Noting that the war on insurgency is already succeeding, Kontagora advised on coordinatoon between the Minister and the National Security Adviser, saying, “I don’t think what happened in the past will happen again. As I once said, once the minister and the service chiefs understand one another and work closely together, government will achieve the December deadline.”  Dr Kachikwu has, as the NNPC GMD, already been engrossed in solving the many problems bedevilling the Petroleum ministry even before Buhari picked him as minister. The current scarcity of premium motor spirit (petrol) and its attendant queues at filling station are, one again, underlining the tough job ahead Kachikwu.  With the refineries still down and the subsidy problem a tough nut to crack, solving the problems in the sector will be qite a challenge for the minister of state.  But former Minister of Petroleum in the Sani Abacha regime,  Alhaji Umaru Dembo, believed that if Kachikwu would just have the strict discipline and will to rein in the centrifugal forces that have made straightening out the petroleum sector very difficult, he would succeed.  It is Fashola’s burden that has given Fasua a bit of a worry. The economist analyst believed Buhari might have taken his confidence in Fashola too far by lumping together the three ministries for the former Lagos State governor to manage.  Fashola was reputed for his hard work and vision. which he brought to bear on what many people say was his good governance in Lagos, but Fasua believed he would need more than these qualities to succeed in his new job.  “Fashola needs a strong ideological bent to address housing alone. And then there are the issues of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Manitoba, Gencos and Dicsos. There is also the protracted problem of road infrastructure,” Fasua pointed out.