Dr. Sam Amadi, a political analyst has told Nigerians that some of the ministers inaugurated by President Bola Tinubu on Monday would most likely not perform optimally.
Amadi, who spoke in an interview while analyzing the ministers and their portfolios, stressed that it’s most likely that some of the ministers were appointed on the basis of politics and patronage.
He said, “The key thing about presidential governance is that it happens from the villa. If it is in the US, it is the white house that governs, the chief of staff and the staffers have responsibility to track policies, even bypass non performing ministers.
“Under section 5 of the constitution, the President can actually take out a function that belongs to a ministry except defined by law and hand it over to another person to run.
“Under previous government, for example former President Olusegun Obasanjo at a time, Nasir El-rufai was made in charge of an interim committee on electricity, under his portfolio as FCT minister. So section 5 says that the President can do any of these jobs by himself, the vice president, the minister or any other public official.
“So, if any of these ministers are failing, because they got there by politics or by patronage, the President can also still mitigate this by circumnavigating them, and getting directors, permanent secretaries to take up the heavy work.
“Unfortunately, this is also the form of inefficiency that we can avoid right now by putting the persons that the President considers fit for those positions.
“This is the first time in history that we’re going to change the cabinet before it was inaugurated. This has never happened before. You got them confirmed, yet to be inaugurated and you are making changes.
“It speaks to one thing, either you didn’t look at them properly and make a decision that shows rigour. It is like this is a reversible phenomenon. If there is political push that resulted in the changes, like the case of the Niger Delta Minister was tactical. It makes sense at this point,” he said.
While speaking on the report that some ministers expressed displeasure over their portfolios, he said, “The issue is not if he doesn’t like the position again and you take him out.
“We shuffle because you focus on appointing a minister that is why the letter of the President said the following persons are appointed as ministers’ nominees for ministerial positions.
“If you appoint people for particular positions, and they’re no longer fit for it or they’re not ready to take it up. You don’t look for a shake up to say where they can be, no. This is because they’ve been identified with a particular position.
“It means that whoever nominated the person for the President would have considered that person in the position they gave him, as fit. It is not that under pressure you will give him a new position. Then the question is, “Is he fit for that position? A lot of ministers are going to be managing sectors they will be engaging for the first time in their lives. You don’t need a PHD in a particular area to do well. There are general managerial competence you should possess, general intelligence to learn. It is always the case that somebody should be appointed based on the places he has worked and gained experience or a place where he has strong ideas of what to do and that is where you have optimal performance.
“We are likely not going to have optimal performance from these ministers because they’ve been rolled into places that seem more prestigious.
“The so-called blue ocean economy because a trillion dollars built under the ocean will generate a lot of money. You’ve been assigned to the sports ministry and it looks like a dry place and the Niger Delta is coming up and you move to that place. The problem is that you don’t have the skills required. All these can be mitigated if the President has quality advisory staff,” he said.
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