Monday letter2
Last week Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari sworn in his new ministers and assigned them portfolios. Unlike 2015 in which the president maintained a lean cabinet, the present has an expanded cabinet of 43 with the creation of additional ministries. Although, some Nigerians are surprised and not comfortable with some of the personalities that made the team Buhari has drawn the ministers’ attention to the numerous challanges ahead. With the inauguration, the ministers should hit the ground running. In his first tenure, the country experienced increase in the wave of attacks by the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents, herders-farmers’ clashes, ethnic and communal strife and high rate of kidnappings.
The new minister of defence should be fully prepared to tackle these security challenges. The ministry of defence should involve all the security apparatchiks to secure our country from these blood thirsty terrorists. The intra-agency rivalry has done more harm than good and should be resolved speedily through the security agencies meetings organised and coordinated by the office of the national security adviser. There is also the need for intensive intelligence gathering and deployment of modern security gadgets to monitor the movement of terrorists and other criminals throughout the length and breadth of the country.
With the numbers of internally displaced people due to numerous crises in the country, the creation of ministry of humanitarian disaster management and social development is apt and timely. The new ministry which is headed by the former commissioner of Nigeria Refugee commission, Sadiya Faruk, will provide the emergency response to the natural and man-made disasters.
Ibrahim Mustapha, Pambegua, Kaduna
