Expectations and Need for Buhari to Assemble a Winning Team

No doubt the composition of President Muhammadu Buhari’s new cabinet will give an insight into the expectations from the new government writes Shola Oyeyipo

Already, the news is filtering in that President Muhammadu Buhari is considering a bipartisan cabinet that would be made up of some radical and competent technocrats as some stakeholders in his party have begun to kick against such a move. But rather than cave in to those objections, Buhari is expected to lay a solid foundation for his last lap by engaging only people capable of actualizing his missions.

His cabinet should therefore comprise incorruptible eggheads selected purely on the basis of merit – people who are capable of resolving the puzzles that have kept Nigeria stagnated over the years and not just another set of politicians being rewarded for their contributions to his electoral victory in the last presidential poll.

However, the president must have it in mind that Nigerians understand he has genuine intention to move the country forward but this can never be achieved without assembling a cabinet that would deliver on his vision.
With respect to all the ministers in the last cabinet, if the president would be evaluated on the basis of the outgoing cabinet, not up to 10 of them performed above average.

Many analysts and loyalists of the president are of the views that the real setback for his administration was that a number of the ministers did not key into his vision.
Not only are people expecting that during his second term, Buhari should put a cabinet in place as soon as he is sworn in. He should identify people with fresh and progressive ideas who will hit the ground running quickly change the current narrative of his administration.

His cult-like followers – mostly in the North – believed Buhari’s first four years in office were not enough to address the rot in the country. If the president’s second term would help to make Nigeria great again, many more Nigerians will likely entrust their destiny in the hands of the All Progressives Congress.
Though Buhari said through his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, that the APC would play a role in determining the choice of his new cabinet, the party’s recommendations should not just dwell on rewarding party loyalists and power mongers.
Just as Adesina claimed that the party “won’t lord or impose things on the president,” since the buck stops on his desk, he must be aware that the glory of the success and the blame for the failure of his cabinet rest on him.

This time around, Nigerians will not be pacified by the Buhari and APC’s blame game that the “PDP mismanaged the economy”. This government is succeeding itself and must show that it has what it takes to move Nigeria to its rightful place in the comity of nations.