By Henry Uche
Legal practitioner, Jiti Ogunye in this Channels TV monitored interview spoke on President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet reshuffle, high cost of governance, executive recklessness, and other issues of national importance.
There were high expectations before the cabinet reshuffle. What is your take on the reshuffle?
Well,in a presidential system of government, the chief executive of the federation of a country is the president, because we have an executive president in Nigeria, and the Constitution provides that in the discharge of his executive powers, he may appoint ministers as subject to the provisions of the Constitution, particularly on the issue of federal character and spread. So undoubtedly, therefore, the President has the prerogative to appoint ministers and remove them, in other words, ministers serve at the pleasure of the President. However, it will be stated that if a president has a four year term of tenure and very early to that tenure, there are suggestions or clamour or a realization by the president himself that he needs to remove some ministers or aides stating reasons or not stating any reason at all; that presupposes that those who are appointed by that President perhaps were not fit for purpose, and since ultimately the president is the one that holds the mandate in his hand and his performance will be judged not only by his own actions, acts and performance in government, but also by the performance of his minister and aides ultimately bears responsibility because the bulks stops on his table. For the reshuffle, there was speculations around it. Some aides of the President had given the hint that the President would reshuffle his cabinet at a particular point. My take on this reshuffle is that, it is the President that knows the person he appointed and hopefully, we hope that these ones that have been appointed, some of them will be sworn- in, and they will justify the reason for appointing them, if the reason for appointing them or making them to come on board or reshuffle them was that the President was dissatisfied with those who were there before, we will eventually know.
The livestock ministry which has now come on board, do you think it will address the farmers/herders clashes?
Quite frankly, when that idea was mooted by the President and there was a discussion around it, there was a committee that was set up, and it was touted as a good move that will ultimately and finally resolve the farmers/herders clashes. I was a little bit uninterested in that. Why? Because there is an agitation in the country for a linear, a smaller government that is sufficient. I understand that the name of the game is politics. If you have the government, politics will play a role in that government. So there is always an inclination to pay IOU to fulfill promises to those who are angling for appointment. But in this country now, since, the Oronsaye committee report, and even before then, there have being an agitation that government should be leaner so that it can be more effective to cut waste and excesses. Government has no business creating chaos for people who just want to be in government. And so you have a Ministry of Agriculture. There might even be a Minister of State for agriculture, I don’t know. And then on top of that, you are creating a special ministry for livestock development. And I don’t want this to be taken as a cultural opposition or a sectional opposition. The question is, are you creating a special ministry for piggery? Are you creating for fishes? And you call it pastoral ministry and so on and so forth. What is that ministry going to do? You want to create a ministry for livestock development. I think that if you want to specifically focus on livestock development in Nigeria, there could be an arm of that same Ministry of Agriculture focusing on livestock development. In western Nigeria, for example, in the First Republic, there was a company, a corporation, that was created by Chief Awolowo government for livestock development. And so ranches were created in western region. And so some cows were imported from Brazil, from Argentina. You know, beautiful, not with threatening horns, and they were put in those ranches. Successive governments and administrations, of course, depleted the stock and threw parties with those cows and cattle, and then the whole ranches were ransacked, and now they became empty. So yes, the government can encourage that, even at the federal level, but bearing in mind that under the land use Act, land belong to the state government, and it is at that level that livestock development ought to be encouraged. I wonder what the ministry of livestock development at the center will be doing, even when questions have been posed about whether you should indeed have a Ministry of Agriculture. You are the federal level. Bearing in mind that the federal government only has Abuja as its territory. All the other territories in Nigeria belong to the states where the action should be happening. And if you look at the Land Use Act, you see a special provision where land could be allocated for livestock development at the local government level, per 20 acres, per 20 hectares, if I’m not mistaken. So, but then it is the policy of government. We will see how it will pan out, and we will see what is going to happen to it.
Can these new appointments in any way reflect the Oronsaye report? Then, do we need ministers of state when we talk about cutting down the cost of government, because we see new appointments for ministers of State?
My short answer to that is that what has happened has not addressed the issue of conserving funds, cutting down the cost of government, or making government more efficient and more productive if you ask me, so that it will not promote emotion, an emotion that you want job for the boys and for the big girls. So from what we read thus far, five minister were sacked and seven were reappointed. So the number has not gone down, and so the agencies and ministries are still there, and departments of government, and there are so many, and there have not been any serious attempt to rationalize or merge them. It is when election is coming, you know, politicians throw up a lot of promises, but as we learnt over the years, it is easier said than done. Managing the size of government… government tells Nigerians everyday that the resources are not there, okay, and so. What is the point in making government top heavy? We are not talking about recruiting more soldiers. We are not talking about bolstering up the strength of the police. Because we have not even reached the US standard. You know, there are so many of such things to be done. You know, unemployment in the country is skyrocketing and so on and so forth, with government primarily telling Nigerians that, oh, government is not a creator of jobs, so government should just create an enabling environment. Government should promote entrepreneurship, as if all those funny talks about how to make wealth and create entrepreneurs will be what would help our country in a final analysis, to be an industrialized country. I mean, if everybody is becoming an entrepreneur, you know everybody, two two persons are setting up business, to do what? To offer services and to sell and buy. They are not talking about creating industry and so on and so forth. All these funny concepts you know that they bring from the west, from Brett Woods institutions, on how to create wealth, on how to alleviate poverty, they are funny concepts, but you know, sufficient attempt is not being made to deconstruct them, because they have stayed with us for some time now, and they have become accepted by everybody. I mean, even the language we speak. We will talk about, if you go to any channels now, any television and they are talking about the economy, they talk about markets. If people are investing, they say the foreign investors are coming to the Nigerian market. So we are a market. We are not a factory.
But this Oronsaye report advised merging the 220 of the 541 government agencies
You know, we can talk about that, but we must address that issue of cost of government from two angles. We have multiplicity of agencies. We have replication of institutions, even the corruption agencies has been there for some time, which make the cost of government to surge- that is one level. The other angle is the cost of government arising from corrupt practices and mismanagement of resources. The perquisites of office, which you know become something so problematic in the face of crying and grinding poverty in the country, okay! So those are the two sources that are driving cost of government in Nigeria. People may not look at it that way to just say, okay, cost of government, What is the cost of government? The money that ministers are receiving, the agencies that we have. That is just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is what I have just spelt out – the cost of corruption in the country. And I think that moving forward, government should consciously deal with that. My position, and I have made this clear on many occasions, democratic actors should not be the great diggers of the democratic process. You know, indicators worldwide show that democracy or civil government only becomes secure when the business of development is attended to by democratic actors. What are we seeing now? You know, just spontaneously, openly, some errant persons who see military vehicles and they start shouting openly. “We want you back” do they know what they are talking about? Do they know what the people of this country went through? And young people, maybe 25, 30 years, never knew what the military government represented at the time. So they just heard about it, and so that is how dangerous and perilous it can be when democracy is not yielding development. It is a very serious matter. Those who are in government should take heed and just do the business of government in an efficient manner in a manner that people will know that the belt is being tightened around, not in one section of the public.
You find the Minister for Health moved to education. the Minister for Sports moved to trade and investment, the Minister of State for Education at the time, who is a doctor, and the questions around his position at the time, but now he is now Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs. What do you make of this reshuffling when we talk about getting it right?
You know, perhaps it is for those who have expertise and specialization in certain areas to superintend those areas, because, it is about efficiency.It would be more difficult rather, to lie to them by bureaucrats and civil servants that some people have called even civil servants and all that, so they hit the ground running once they are there, round pegs in round holes. But it’s generally believed that ministers can serve anywhere. You see a senior lawyer becoming a Minister works in Nigeria, becoming a Minister of Energy in Nigeria, and so on and so forth. So it is believed that a minister can serve anywhere, and those ministers anyway will not reject such appointments.
They will not say ‘no’, this is not what I’m looking for. This is not where I will optimize my contribution. No, because people just want to get appointments, and people lobby for these appointments. So it is rare to see people say, am not an agricultural expert. I have not done anything like this before. So why do you want me to be a minister of agriculture? Or I’m not an educationist, why do you want me to be here and so on and so forth? But as I said, It is generally believed that many disciplines can serve across the areas where disciplines required, and that will not be a problem for politicians. They claim that they are the inexperienced and that the experts -the bureaucrats are people in the ministry, and that they will do the job anyway. So that is the notion. So that is, as I said, is better to get those who know about the ministry that superintendent the people there, but that is not our experience, not only now, but before now.
Scrapping the Niger Delta Affairs Ministry and replacing it with a Regional Ministry because of the Development Commissions that have been created, What do you think about a Regional Ministry to superintendent the Development Commissions, bearing in mind the establishing Act of these Commissions designates them?
You know, over time the issue of having regional or zonal Development Commissions has been politicized. I thought that Niger Delta Development Commission was created specifically to deal with the problem of that region, but our politicians been who they are came forward to say that every zone has its own peculiar problem, and so this has been replicated now entirely across those zones. So I think that is a smart move, therefore, for the President to streamline, have one ministry that serve these Commissions, I think that is some good thinking, if you ask me, because I saw it and I felt this one is perhaps a solid thing to do at this point in time.
Are you surprised with the appointments in the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs? I asked that because some said that we don’t need a ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. In fact, I recall a Bode George described it as a thiefy thiefy ministry, some headlines had describe it as a ‘corruption -laden ministry’ but now we have two ministers overseeing that ministry. What are your thoughts on that?
You know, in Nigeria, we started with three regions, then we became four regions. Then we became 12 states, 19, 30, then 36. States have been atomized in Nigeria, in the same way fashion ministries, departments are being atomized and replicated. I have talked about this before. You know, government had, they call it Poverty Alleviation Program, Intervention programs. Some of the programs are funded by development partners and lenders and Western countries who claim that they are giving handouts to poor nations according to them. And so this money will come in some locally sourced, domestically sourced, and they spent on these programs. So past administration had ‘Sure -P Program’. Another one will come with another program. So eventually, under the past administration of Muhammadu Buhari, we now have this ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and it became a center for slice so much that EFCC, started investigating it. So, I don’t know what the thinking in government is, if that ministry have been run in such a manner that is now regarded as a criminal enterprise, if that notion is being entrenched, what is the assurance that those who may be appointed to superintendent it, whether they are two or three or one, will also not remember, at the very least, remember what was going on there before. So such interventions can be done under substantive ministries. That is the point I’m making. But you know, more and more people, more and more interest are coalesced in forming government, and everybody will just want a piece of the pie. Everybody wants a position, everybody wants something, and so politicians will say that ‘We are in this just to get you elected’, and then we won’t have anything. What are we going to have? So all we need is to recalibrate our thinking. We need to prioritize service. We need to make government not so lucrative as to attract people that think that government is business and that it is a place to make money. In the past in this country, even the legislature, headmasters, school principals were the one going to Parliament. In western region, in all the parts of this country. So the question of having a permanent bureaucracy under a presidential system of government; you have legislators there, it wasn’t there. And I think that we need to learn a lot. Look, I give this example each time I look at the British system, and I see that iconic number 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister of Great Britain, of United Kingdom, will now leave his home and then go to the road, mentally I then compare it with our own Aso Rock, and all the things we do in our various Houses of Assembly, in our various government Houses, look at the waste.
Minister for Youth been fired. What are your thoughts?
He who hires has the right to fire. I don’t know the reason why the minister has been fired, but maybe perhaps the President has his metrics of measuring performance. I know that the lady, Adiza was the one going around the ministry and assessing their performance. Maybe there is a report of performance at the level of each ministry, and the President feels that some of them have not discharged their responsibly creditably well, and therefore he has to remove them.
