One of the salient propositions the promoters of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu made to Nigerians during the campaign period was his reported knack for assembling brilliant talents across the country and deploying them to achieve remarkable results. A catalogue of his chosen successors, as governor, was quickly flaunted. And their efforts to transform Lagos, into a place to be reckoned with in the comity of mega cities, were showcased. Of course, in this marketing blitzkrieg, little was mentioned about how the Asiwaju shabbily treated his two former female deputy governors, Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele and Sinatu Ojikutu.
Expectations were therefore high that in choosing his cabinet members, the President would depart radically from his nepotistic predecessor who put together, particularly in his second term, a hotch-potch of lusterless and garden variety persons proximate to him.This is not to add that in his first term, he took like forever to constitute a cabinet. And when he eventually did, it was a complete let down.
Besides, concerned by the controversial manner in which Chief Tinubu was declared President, some perceptive Nigerians had canvassed for a government of national unity. Chief Tinubu rebuffed them. Rather than form a government of national unity, he would, he insisted, constitute a government of “national competence”.
Against the very grain and spirit of the Constitution, President Tinubu presented to the Senate for screening his cabinet list in two tranches. A cursory look at the list will betray one fact: that it is bloated and clearly out of sync with the reality of our straitened times. Each cabinet member enjoys appurtenances and perks of office. A large retinue of Ministers,which will increase the cost of governance, thus does not agree with our challenging economy and the many sacrifices which ordinary folks have been summoned to make by virtue of austere policies being implemented by this government. The cabinet size ought to reflect the austere times.
A closer look at the list of Ministerial nominees will reveal in clear relief that there a few stellar persons. Their brilliant bonafides and uplifting reputations precede them. And these few nominees have before now excelled in their fields of endeavor and added tremendous value either to their States or the nation.
While there are luminous technocrats who have paid their dues and can be depended upon to deliver on their portfolios, there are several nondescript ones. What are going for such unknown quantities are their reported proximity to some political godfathers or their pristine loyalty to the governing All Progressives Congress(APC). These nominees appear to enjoy patronage merely as part of the time-honored jobs-for-the-boys/girls syndrome.
Compounding patronage is that some of the Ministerial nominees are former governors who either failed to win elections to the Senate or betrayed their people. Apart from failing woefully to deliver good governance in their States, all of them left humongous debts for their successors and citizens.
Amongst the rank of these governors is a celebrated religious bigot. He was distinguished for hounding and traumatizing his citizens. Under his mendacious watch as governor, properties were whimsically demolished, court orders were willfully disobeyed and his State became the epicenter of terrorism and banditry. As if these were not bad enough, he ran the State like a bantustan entity reminiscent of the dark days of apartheid in South Africa. A section of his State was deliberately driven to the margins.
Another of the governors who was nominated has the singular distinction of outsourcing the affairs of his State to his Chief Press Secretary. He was always luxuriating in Abuja, even as marauders and terrorists took over large swathes of his state and perpetrated genocidal killings with abandon. This was the same character who famously remarked at a rally in Ilorin that it was time for the Asiwaju “to chop” if he eventually won the presidential election.
Yet another is alleged to have facilitated the laundering of stolen Nigerian funds, running into hundreds of millions of dollars, for the late military dictator, General Sani Abacha. One can go on ad nauseam.
But the worse case scenario is that not a few of these cabinet nominees of Mr. President have petitions alleging corruption and abuse of office against them which are pending before the anti-corruption agencies. With such checkered careers steeped in corruption and mindless theft, and with minds set in religious hatred, one is bewildered as to how President Tinubu intends to turn the country’s fortune around by using these characters as his Special Purpose Vehicles(SPVs). How can persons who are acutely bereft of ennobling values and who have thoroughly betrayed their people by failing to deliver good governance suddenly transform into messiahs who would retrieve the same people from the mire in which they had bogged them? By giving them Ministerial appointments, which are exalted and strategic positions, is the President not appearing to reward them for shortchanging their people and empowering them to visit the same iniquity and wickedness on the Nigerian people? What guarantee do we have that these rotten eggs will not taint or contaminate other straight and patriotic members of the cabinet and to the country’s enduring detriment?
A cabinet suffused with persons of dubious character and who are alleged to be treasury looters ought to obtain only in the realm of folklore. One such fiction that readily comes to mind is that of ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES. This 18th Century tale was orally rendered by Hanna Diyab, the Syrian story teller from Allepo, to the French writer, Antoine Galland. Alas, this is happening in the 21st Century and in Nigeria, an embattled country that desperately needs to be rescued from the brink of self-inflicted disaster.
Not only does the presence of these tainted Ministers-to-be call to question the integrity of the government, it rubbishes the work of the anti-corruption agencies. What motivation will the anti-corruption agencies have when corrupt members of the society are succoured and empowered by the government?
When you add the Senate President, Godswill Akpbabio and the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress(APC), Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, who have issues with alleged corruption either pending before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) or the Courts, what comes across is not a government of “national competence”. It is the very opposite of it. It is a tale which only the Syrian story teller,Hanna Diyab, could have foretold, using the fertile figment of her imagination.
With a cabinet replete with alleged thieves, incompetents, religious bigots and persons who betrayed their people, hope becomes elusive. Renewed hope, which is President Tinubu’s campaign mantra, becomes but a mirage.