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There has been so much noise about the president’s cabinet reshuffle sparking the frenzied lobbying that comes with quest the for juicy political office and we are finally seeing some ripple in the normally placid Yaradua government. Sixteen months into the Yaradua administration we are faced with a reshuffle of public administration that is sure to cost taxpayers money and set back the smooth execution of government and her policies or lack of it. This change (or expected change) coming after sixteen months is being hailed by Yaradua supporters as the mystic wand that shall cure the unprecedented government inertia we have seen in the last sixteen months. We are inundated with exaggerated headlines such as “complete change expected”, “ministers to serve out only one term” and various headlines that are more comical than logical. Yaradua and his supporters have trumpeted this cabinet change as good for the country describing it as the unencumbering of the baggage inherited from powers before the president, we would wait patiently to see the outcome.
Certain questions and comments need be asked and made before we drink the president’s gall wholeheartedly. Why has is taken Yaradua sixteen months to understand that his cabinet was uninspiring, pedantic and certain of low performance? Do the president and his supports actually think it makes good judgment on his part to have waited this long to discern what an average university “jambite” could have discerned of his cabinet? The president fails to instill confidence in the populace with his slow response to issues, clearly the power to appoint and dismiss ministers in his cabinet is vested in him and he has taken this long to precipitate change it is becoming clear that the president’s “siddon look” style to governance does not serve Nigeria’s aspirations for confident leadership. Further, if this is a barometer of how the Yaradua government would handle the issues we face as a nation then we can predict that nothing significant would come from the Yaradua government. Political reality dictates we acknowledge that the circumstances that produced Yaradua handicapped him, but it also forces the argument that the president is either still bound to his patrons or he lacks the political dexterity to assert himself either way the forecast under Yaradua does not still seem good. Since Nigeria cannot gain the lost unproductive sixteen months and it seems more dangerous and costly to stick to an inefficient cabinet the argument should shift forward to the composition of his cabinet and larger issues for that reason we look to the future than draw breath from the corpse of yesterday.
The new cabinet in principle would be a Yaradua cabinet we are told, but the pressing question still remains what shall the nature of his cabinet be? Thisday (September 27, 2008) reports that president and the infamous PDP were meeting to decide the composition of his cabinet, if this is true the president must understand that with sixteen months on the job-training as president his freshman year is over, so it is expected of him that the cabinet reflects his choices and not mediocre ministers born of political compromise. If the PDP is allowed to sway the selection process we are certain that we would wind up with old wine in new skins because the PDP is infamous for exhuming failed leaders and recycling them, Obasanjo had some spleen but with Yaradua we might actually end up with a worse cabinet that this one. It is logical to assume that in the last sixteen months the president would have learned how to assert himself, he needs to understand that he is being watched to deliver more of the “Okonjo-Iweala” type ministers and not the “Grange” type ministers that he claims were forced on him. The president must match all his rhetoric of change with the substance of his team composition, because from the composition of his cabinet it would be easy to deduce if the change of direction everyone knows his government needs is for real or it is just more of the same.
The president might want to read Team of rivals by the acclaimed Pulitzer author Doris Kearns Goodwin, it tells how Abraham Lincoln jealously guarded and independently selected his cabinet. A cabinet born of political sensibilities but defined by his insistence on ability and brilliance and what it took to maintain this team or rivals, marshalling them not only to win a war but consolidating Lincoln’s image as one of the greatest political genius of all times. It is expected that the president would coral men and women of intelligence, insisting on ability and not partisan ambition, he needs to understand that despite all his inaction and perceived weakness (real or imagined) he still enjoys a measured amount of goodwill with a greater number of the populace because there is an expectation (real or imagined) that he can effect the leadership direction need to herald change in our polity. Many view him as honest but weak, Abraham Lincoln suffered this same perception but not only did he cement the fact he was honest through his actions; he also dispelled any thought of his weakness by what he achieved through his cabinet and political acumen. It is not expecting too much to ask our president to cast his shadow in the same sun Lincoln walked under.
Finally, it is imperative that we as a nation revisit section 147(3) of the constitution to determine if its stipulation does not actually hinder the composition of a workable cabinet. Section 147(3) of the constitution in plain English mandates that ministerial appointments be made to satisfy representation of all states in the country at the Federal cabinet, this is in line with section 14(3) of the constitution that mandates equity of all states and ethnic groups in the composition of government bodies. This forces two actions, one, it creates and feeds the huge bureaucracy filled with ministers and ministers-of-state replete with their special advisers and copious political jobbers. Second it forces selection statewide making the president dependent on state party hierarchies to produce his ministers without his necessary evaluation of such person’s ability and for our present president with little associations outside Katsina and the North he really is at the mercy of his party. Though the intentions of the constitution framers is appreciated this section of the constitution renders the ministerial selection processes a trading for political patronage, it has become a process designed to reward party stalwarts who are not necessary men equal to the task.
This tradition of mammoth bureaucracy created by the amount of ministries and political office holders should be audited as to its effectiveness at achieving policy intentions because a leaner cabinet might be requisite for change and progress. As much as one recognizes the need for the president to obey the laws as it is, the president needs to work around the limitations the law poses either by seeking actual qualified candidates with or without party affinities and making them the state representative with or without the blessings of the state parties, or require state party hierarchies to produce people with certain qualifications and track record suitable to the position. The political reality is that with the present selection process, state candidates would be those with the largest influence or backers and these individuals are unfortunately the most corrupt as they have to water the ground they stand on, this partly explains why from the last administration and the president’s last sixteen months this multiple ministries and their ministers seem more like holes in the nation’s ship rather than engines to propel us forward.
The constitution should be amended to construe section 147(3) as regional representation rather than state representation. Representation based on state contributes to the excessive waste and supersize structure of government and it is doing more harm than good and highlighting the price we pay for playing ethnic politics. In the light of the challenges we face as a nation it is becoming fiscally irresponsible to structurally dictate representation at this level, though there is a need to balance composition of government agencies, state representation at the federal cabinet is becoming the medicine that is killing the patient. We hope the journey to amending the constitution would start again and this time end more meaningfully rather than the attempted imposition of a third term and that this time legislation that hamper the selection of able candidates and bloats the size of government would be amended to reflect our present reality. We would now wait for the president since the ball is now in his court.
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Posted by Robot| 07.10.2008 08:49