HOW do you describe incompetence? Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as “1, not legally qualified; 2, inadequate to, or unsuitable for a particular purpose; 3, (a) lacking the qualities for effective action; (b) unable to function properly”.
For me, when a president says he is taking his time to look for a crop of qualified and incorruptible Nigerians to serve in his cabinet and, after wasting five months, comes out with a group that could easily have been assembled within four days of assuming power, I consider such a person as betraying signs of incompetence.
Let us ask ourselves: does the ministerial list of President Muhammadu Buhari justify the five months he squandered? In his Independence Day broadcast, Buhari discarded the notion that the lengthy time it took owed to any search for “Nigerian angels and saints”, which was the fib his spin doctors and party megaphones sold to the populace. He said he was assessing the ministries to determine how many of them to prune before appointing ministers. That was a sound alibi, if you ask me. But why did he not say so in the beginning? Why the deception? When you create an air of false expectations by the time the game is exposed for what it is, you get people disappointed, angry and disillusioned. They will begin to distrust you.
Ministerial nominees, such as Chibuike Amaechi (the man who does not like money, or the man who has never given or taken bribe), Babatunde Fashola (the man who does not sign cheques) and a few other “marked” nominees would never have attracted the level of furore they did if Buhari had not campaigned on the platforms of anti-corruption and “change”.
Unquestionable character
Our constitution does not debar an accused person, even if he is undergoing trial, from being appointed minister or public officer unless he or she has been convicted in a competent court. That Buhari did no wrong in naming them for his cabinet is not in doubt under our constitution. That the Senate did no wrong in giving them easy passage is constitutionally supported.
What was lacking, however, was that special, extra bait that Buhari dangled and grabbed the fancy of majority of the voters: securing the services of people of unquestionable character to serve as his ministers as part of his anti-corruption policy. That was the ingredient that mirrored the “change” we were promised. And with those ingredients now totally lacking, we ask Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC): WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NOMINATION AND SCREENING OF MINISTERS UNDER BUHARI’S APC FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THOSE OF PDP IN THE LAST SIXTEEN YEARS?
Buhari’s APC Federal Government simply copied and pasted the template defined by the PDP Federal Government. This is why I call it a “business as usual” cabinet. If you nominate former governors accused (with a deluge of petitions) of large-scale graft, what moral right do you still have to call former President Jonathan’s ministers, such as Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke and Senator Stella Oduah dirty names when they, too, have not yet been convicted? That’s the pot calling the kettle black!
For five good months, Buhari – and the nation – have groped in the dark, not knowing in which direction we are going. Is this not the same “cluelessness” of which the President Goodluck Jonathan regime was accused by APC during the campaigns? The organised private sector, through the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Director General, Mr. Muda Yusuf, has cried itself hoarse about the woes this grope in the dark has imposed on the same people Buhari hopes to use to create jobs. Even the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. James Entwistle; a Buhari enthusiast whose country helped to oil the wheels of the much touted “change revolution” complained bitterly to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State last week saying: “we are waiting”.
I am afraid we must wait for at least, two more months before we know where we are going. That is the time it will take for the cabinet and the economic team to be fully installed and come out with a roadmap. That is the time it will take for the 2016 budget to be designed and tabled before the National Assembly for consideration, though we don’t know when it will be passed and signed into law.
Who knows, by the time they are through, one year would be over, with three more to go!
Mahmood Yakubu – from the backdoor!
COMPARE and contrast the ways former National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega and his newbie successor, Professor Mahmood Yakubu emerged and decide for yourself what manner of change the Buhari administration has brought to Nigeria.
Shortly after being sworn-in as full President on 6th May 2010, former President Goodluck Jonathan publicly launched the search for a new INEC Chairman as he saw that the occupant of that office, Professor Maurice Iwu, no longer enjoyed the confidence of the generality of the Nigerian people. Iwu’s five-year term was nearing an end, and Jonathan bowed to the wishes of Nigerians and replaced him.
Nigerians hotly debated and asked the Federal Government to implement the Justice Muhammadu Uwais Report on Electoral Reform.
The late President Umaru Yar’ Adua had set up the 22-man Uwais Panel on August 28th 2007 with a view to correcting the perceived anomalies of the electoral process that brought him to office.
The committee pored through 1,466 memoranda, listened to 907 presentations during its tour of the country and consulted with experts on electoral systems of such countries as Botswana, South Africa, France, India and Ghana. It submitted its report in December 2008.
Parts of its core recommendations were that (A) the Constitution should be amended to transfer the power of appointment of the members of the INEC Board from the President to the National Judicial Council (NJC), which will recommend nominees to the Senate for approval. The President would merely append his signature. (B) The people to be appointed must be men and women of integrity. This was to ensure the independence of the electoral umpire and guarantee credible elections.
Jonathan had no time to start a constitution amendment, so he simply appointed one of the names widely applauded by the public, Professor Jega; a man the president said he had never met before.
We saw the subsequent credibility of elections Jega’s team conducted both at state and federal levels, which enabled opposition parties to win elections, often defeating the ruling PDP. The biggest of these was the ouster of Jonathan himself and the enthronement of Buhari’s APC in 2015. It made Nigeria’s democracy a worldwide model.
But what has happened under Buhari? Prof. Yakubu was sneaked in through the backdoor and presented straight to the National Council of State, which as usual, swiftly rubberstamped his nomination. The public was never allowed to examine and debate this nomination. Buhari broke the established convention of appointing the National Chairman of the INEC from outside the ethno-geopolitical crucible of the sitting president. He appointed a fellow Fulani from Bauchi. It NEVER happened before! Buhari has, thus, further NORTHERNISED the federal government under his watch.
Questions: How INDEPENDENT will INEC be under Yakubu? Can opposition parties stand a fair chance as they did under Yar’ Adua and Jonathan? Why did Buhari totally ignore the Uwais Report? If the president does not have a hidden agenda, why sneak Yakubu upon us? Will the Presidency ever leave the North in our lifetime?
What a tragic setback for our democracy which made such giant leaps in the Yar’ Adua/Jonathan years! The Senate must STOP Yakubu!
VANGUARD
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