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Politics Of Buhari’s Ministerial List - Vanguard Newspaper by Elose11(m): 6:59am On Oct 12, 2015 |
FOR four months, President
Muhammadu Buhari was busy
in his one-man conclave
spinning an elaborate mystery
about the character and quality
of people he would nominate
into his cabinet.
He stoked expectations, and
speculations ran riot in the
media and public spaces. The
nation waited impatiently for
him to unveil his saintly agents
of change. What finally came
out, for most Nigerians, did not
reflect the “Change” that
Buhari promised but a massive
“Shortchange”. The president
made a big mess of the simple
act of eating an egg!
Looking at the names now on
the table of the Senate
President Bukola Saraki, it is
obvious that Buhari could easily
have formed his cabinet within
a week of his swearing-in. His
inner or “kitchen cabinet” is
made up of “people he knows”,
those who have worked for him
over the years when he ran
and lost presidential elections.
Now is the time for them to
reap their “rewards”. The outer
cabinet (ministerial nominees)
is made up of those who
contributed in one form or the
other to the victory of the All
Progressives Congress (APC)
and his own emergence as the
president of Nigeria.
The search for ministers was
not an act of altruism. It did not
put aside political
considerations to appoint men,
women and youth of
impeccable character to give
Nigeria a fresh opportunity.
Fresh opportunity
Being a recycled material, he
merely went and recycled
other materials, including many
who played leading roles in
what APC likes to call “sixteen
years of rot and misrule” by
the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) as National Chairmen,
Governors and what have you.
However, in bending to political
necessity rather than altruism,
Buhari actually did what our
highly permissive constitution
expects of him. The
constitution says that for a
person to be a minister he
must be qualified to be a
member of the House of
Representatives. Since
independent candidacy is not
permitted, it means he or she
MUST be a card-carrying
member of a political party,
especially the party that won
the presidential election to
govern for four years.
The constitution expects that
these politicians coming into
the president’s cabinet would
go to the various ministries and
help the president and the
ruling party to implement their
manifestos and campaign
promises. Based on this, it
would have been difficult for
Buhari to sideline or sidestep
some of the most derided
nominees, such as Rotimi
Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola,
Kayode Fayemi, Chris Ngige,
Audu Ogbeh and others.
Amaechi, we must remember,
was the Director General of the
APC Presidential Campaign. He
was a mainstay of the Buhari
campaign. He is the biggest
factor of APC presence in the
South-South, and he is paying
for his efforts with the probe he
is undergoing under the
government of Governor
Nyesom Wike, his successor.
Fashola, an estranged scion of
the Bola Tinubu political clan,
threw himself headlong into
the Buhari campaign during
which little else happened or
mattered in Lagos. Buhari
obviously noticed his
untrammelled display of direct
loyalty (as opposed to coming
through Tinubu) and the two
clicked at the personal level.
The same goes for Fayemi, a
very likeable gentleman and
intellectual resource person
who, many had believed, could
have been the Chief of Staff or
Secretary to the Government
of the Federation. However,
when victory came, people like
him were pushed to the
background while northerners
who were never heard of
during the campaigns were
brought to fill “97%” of the
kitchen cabinet. I had predicted
on this forum that this would
happen under a President
Buhari.
Chris Ngige is a sacrificial lamb
of the APC in the South-East. A
founding father of the PDP,
Ngige was rigged into the office
of governor of Anambra State
in 2003 by his political
godfathers, but when he
refused to dance to their tune
they humiliated him. He was
eventually bundled out of
power by the courts, but not
before setting an enduring
foundation for good
governance in Anambra State.
Ngige who narrowly won
election for the Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to
the Senate in 2011 was flushed
out in 2015 because his people
believed he belonged to “the
wrong party”. Besides, not
much has been said of Ngige
and corruption. He and
grandpa Audu Ogbeh (Minister
of Communications 38 years
ago when the then Senate
Leader and Bukola Saraki’s
father, Dr. Olusola Saraki,
participated in screening him)
are among the relatively clean
politicians among Buhari’s
nominees. Instructively, they
were also ranking PDP top
shots!
A bold political statement
Buhari has made with this
exercise is that he is
methodically creating a new
APC (both party and
government) which will reflect
his own image and likeness.
The days of sitting with Asiwaju
Bola Tinubu and sharing power
along the CPC/ACN merger
terms are over. Tinubu’s vision
of power sharing with Buhari
was that, at least, he would be
allowed to nominate all
Buhari’s manpower from the
South West and maintain his
hard-won political kingdom.
But Buhari ignored him and
appointed Tinubu’s rebellious
political godsons, Fashola and
Fayemi. Tinubu was not even
allowed to nominate the
minister from Lagos! Sources
close to the president disclosed
that when Tinubu sent Chief
Bisi Akande to find out why his
nominees failed to make the
list, the president reportedly
told him that since he (Tinubu)
had already produced Vice
President Yemi Osinbajo,
Majority Leader of the House of
Reps, Femi Gbajabiamila and
the nation’s chief taxman,
Babatunde Fowler, there was a
need to give “other tendencies
in the South West” their own
share.
Question: who are these “other
tendencies in the South West”?
The entire South West came
into the platform that produced
Buhari’s victory through
Tinubu’s defunct ACN. Even
Governors Abiola Ajimobi of
Oyo and Adekunle Amosun of
Ogun won their first term
elections under Tinubu’s ACN.
But Buhari chose to remember
that Amosun once contested
election under the defunct All
Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP)
when he (Buhari) ran for
president on its platform. Now,
Fashola, Fayemi, and Amosun’s
former finance commissioner,
Kemi Adeosun, are treated as
“other tendencies in the South
West”!
The implication is obvious.
Even if Buhari is not
encouraging Tinubu’s disciples
to be rebellious towards him,
he is not discouraging them
from bringing their loyalties
directly to him. As ministers
who are independent of
Tinubu, Buhari can easily use
them to bolster his hold on the
APC in Yorubaland and
eventually consign Tinubu to
increasing political irrelevance.
Political irrelevance
The mergers that put Buhari in
power will give way to a new
APC created after the image
and likeness of the president.
APC will thusly cease to be
what Lai Mohammed naively
described as a party with
“many leaders”. Our old
question as to whether Buhari
will share power with Tinubu
will be comprehensively
answered.
How will the political
“partnership” between the
North and South-West, which
brought Buhari to power fare
henceforth? Will the late Dr.
Sam Goomsu Ikoku be proved
right, once again? He once
postulated thus: “a merger of
unequals always results in the
tyranny of the major partner: a
master-servant relationship”.
Looking ahead, with the profile
and character of politicians and
individuals heading for Buhari’s
cabinet, we are likely to see a
lot of scandals. Politicians who
funded the president’s
campaign and got rewarded
with ministerial posts will
definitely want to recoup their
“investments” and rearm for
2019. In fact, that some of
these people with bold
question-marks hanging on
their heads are selected to be
part of a government that
purports to fight corruption is
already a scandal of its own.
Political expediency is already
overshadowing Buhari’s
avowed war against corruption.
Again we ask: is this Change?
Or Shortchange? |
Re: Politics Of Buhari’s Ministerial List - Vanguard Newspaper by mandarin: 8:09am On Oct 12, 2015 |
Fashola and Fayemi may give good loyalty to Buhari but they can't betray Tinubu. |
Re: Politics Of Buhari’s Ministerial List - Vanguard Newspaper by Volksfuhrer(m): 9:13am On Oct 12, 2015 |
mandarin: Did you say "can't"? Nothing is certain in politics. But everything depends on Tinubu's attitude towards them. |
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