VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA
One young man wrote somewhere on social media at the weekend that President Tinubu should hurry up and name members of his cabinet “so that Nigerians can rest from the anxiety, speculations and fake lists in circulation.”
Rest? Who told him that we will rest when the list of ministers is finally out? In all likelihood, a new round of katakata will only just begin. There are many interest groups, analysts, social media warriors, CSOs, regional and politico-religious groups that are already lying in ambush, ready to pounce on the ministerial list and allege that this or that group has been marginalized, that this or that group was unduly favoured and that this or that group was forgotten altogether.
No wonder President Tinubu is playing his cards close to his chest. The formula for appointing ministers in Nigeria is more complicated that integral calculus. It is more delicate than open heart surgery. Nigerians expect it to be done faster than the Super Collider. It must have dimensions as precise as the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is given to more reading and interpretation than Shakespeare’s sonnets, and with less room for mistake than a NASA rocket launch.
In Nigeria, people who call themselves “politicians” expect to get all or at least most of the cabinet posts. While a person who gets elected as president or governor might now be thinking of quality appointees in order to deliver his programs, politicians think of cabinet posts only as reward for service already rendered, that is, in getting the votes. The more votes a politician delivered, the more he thinks he deserves a cabinet post, his other qualifications notwithstanding. “Where was he during the campaign, when we were sleeping in the bush?” is their attitude to the nomination of a technocrat. Their main argument, which by the way resonates with most Nigerians, is that “If we didn’t put him in there, will he be sharing posts to technocrats? Leave him. In four years’ time, let us see if technocrats can get him reelected.”
The added complication for President Tinubu is that nine APC governors, who played extremely crucial roles in his primary and general election success, finished their tenures in May and are visibly eager to get cabinet posts. Many other party hopefuls are not happy at this prospect, hence the planted newspaper articles urging Tinubu not to appoint former governors as ministers.
Eagerly waiting with their mouths close to microphones and with their fingers poised on laptop keyboards are spokespersons of regional and ethnic groups. Afenifere and Yoruba Elders Forum, once the most vocal of them, are likely to have a shrill voice this time around because the region they claim to speak for now has the Ace of Spades, the President. The number of ministers from different regions will not be a big issue since the Constitution specified that each state must have at least one minister. I thought 36 ministers is large enough, but some Abuja natives are already clamouring that they must have a minister too. I even thought they will ask for three ministers since some lawyers have interpreted the Electoral Act to confer on the FCT an electoral status superior to ordinary states.
Yet, since 1999, presidents have found this number to be insufficient for purposes of political permutations. President Obasanjo added one more minister per geopolitical zone, for a total of 42. This enabled him to source technocrats, who ended up occupying the biggest cabinet posts, as well as to pick ministers from marginalized areas within geopolitical zones. So, while the number of ministers will not be controversial, wait until portfolios are assigned to them. Nigerians see some cabinet posts as “juicy” while others are seen as “dry.” That is when the geo-ethnic groups will scrutinize the list and some could go to town with allegations of marginalization.
Religious groups will not even wait that long. As soon as the list of ministers is made public, some groups will calculate the number of Christians versus the number of Muslims and go to town with howls of protest. President Tinubu might see cabinet appointments as his best chance to combat the Muslim/Muslim ticket furore once and for all. Yet, if he bends over too much, MURIC is there to howl that Muslims are marginalized in the cabinet. Luckily for the President, adherents of traditional African religion, Nigerian polytheists, Nigerian Jews, followers of Guru Maharaji as well as Nigerian atheists have never protested their exclusion from the cabinet. Within the major religious blocs however, there are different sects, denominations and tendencies that could scrutinize the cabinet list and allege imbalance.
Women groups led by the National Council of Women Societies [NCWS] are eagerly waiting to see if they get “35% affirmative action.” In recent years, they have forced boards of directors of companies, management teams of public corporations and executive councils of civil society groups to bend over backwards and integrate women into their ranks. How many women can Tinubu get into the cabinet, much as he might wish to? One problem is that women are for the most part marginal in the top ranks of political parties. If he follows the old formula of asking state APC chapters to nominate three persons for ministerial appointment, few of them are likely to include women in their lists because too many powerful men will jostle for the slots. So, the president must find another way, maybe to tell the APC branches that at least one of their three nominees must be a woman. Or else, he could use the extra ministers representing geopolitical zones to get some women in.
Youth groups are likely to be up in arms if they perceive marginalization of youths in the ministerial line up. In recent years, youth groups have been the most vocal in their demands for inclusion in power circles. They are yet to say precisely who is a youth, with respect to ministerial posts. Early in this Republic, a group called “Under 50” politicians, many of them state governors, senators and ministers, sprang up in this country and claimed to be the vanguard of youths. More than twenty years later, some of them are still prominent in politics and they refuse to give way to younger folks.
There are as many definitions of youth as there are defining organisations. In Nazi Germany for example, Adolf Hitler told Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach to step down as Reichsjugendfuhrer because he turned 33 in 1940. In Nigeria, PDP once elected a 60-year-old as National Youth Leader. Some youth groups expect thirty and twenty something year olds to sit in the federal cabinet. One problem with that is that when such ministers go to their assigned ministries, their parents, uncles and teachers could still be in service and it will cause complications in exercise of authority. Anyway, a young person could still become minister if his grooming for high office started early. For example, a person who became a commissioner, state assembly or House of Reps member in his or her 20s, could be ready for a ministerial job in his 30s and could be a governor by 40. But to expect to go straight from the classroom to become a minister is unrealistic unless you are the son of Nicaraguan dictator General Somoza. On the day his son graduated from military academy, he was appointed Army Chief as graduation gift.
Some professionals have spread the tale that for a cabinet to be of quality, it must be made up of “technocrats,” not “politicians.” Doctors, engineers, bankers and academics see themselves as the country’s most important talent pool who should be given top posts in order to ensure “quality.” Truth however is that given the topsy turvy nature of Nigerian public service, military, security agencies, diplomatic service and also of the private sector in recent decades, all kinds of technocrats and professionals have found their way into politics, it being the most open profession with no entry qualifications or certificate requirements. It is therefore wrong to make a distinction between the two groups because almost every kind of professional can be found in politics these days.
Opposition parties, of course, are unlikely to see anything good in the list of ministers once it is unveiled. There are rumours that some non-APC people could make it into the cabinet. While NNPP is likely to welcome such a prospect, PDP and Labour Party are likely to disown any member who accepts such a post. “Anti-corruption crusaders” are also lying in wait. As soon as the list is out, they will rush to see if anyone ever had a file in EFCC, ICPC, Code of Conduct Bureau, NDLEA or court. These groups are unforgiving; in 1991, they obtained a 1968 photo of a prominent Rivers State NRC governorship aspirant in his Ikoyi Prison uniform. They splashed it all over the city. It turned out that in 1985, Military Governor of Lagos State Group Captain Gbolahan Mudashiru granted him a pardon which wiped away the criminal record. In law that is, but not in politics.
Another pitfall area these days is NYSC. The service is 50 years old this year, so almost all those who are nominated to be ministers should have served in the scheme, unless the nominee’s education stopped at secondary school or if he or she obtained an exemption, some of which could be fake. Some NGOs will rush to NYSC data base and demand to see if the ministerial nominees dodged NYSC, a la two Buhari ministers. Finally, the media is likely to complain that some ministerial nominees have been recycled. Although the Constitution never set a limit to how long a person can be in public life, Nigerian newspapers want it to be as short as possible.
