Dr. Sam Amadi is Director of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. In this interview he spoke on the planned cabinetreshuffle by President Bola Tinubu and what could likely be the areas of focus, among others. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts:
The President’s planned reshuffle of his cabinet, what do you think should form the major focus?
The way things have turned out, the challenges maybe that things didn’t work the way he expected, depending on how difficult those challenges will be, maybe he didn’t fit the right personnel and so reassessing the situation he found other competences that willneed to drive the economy and other sectors to where they ought to be. So this could be midway, you correct and you review. Maybe they didn’t quite prepare well enough, they didn’t quite exercise the level of foresight and rigour in putting up the team in the first place. I think it’s better late than never
It appears that theonly ministers that are safe are the minister of FCT, Wike, Works minister, Umahi and the minister of interior, Tunji Ojo, this is according to this particular report. In your assessment which ministry would you say should remain?
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The key word here is should and not would, and again, we should bear in mind that presidents reshuffleteams for many reasons. The more rational we would assume should be performance. These guys didn’t quite deliver or these guys have delivered. Performanceshould be the key indicator but oftentimes loyalty and prospective political outcomes factor in, this is unfortunately the way we do our governance here. Who goes or who stays may not be determined by performance. So, I think if you look at the story of those who are said to be safe, there could be a logic for it. The minister of interior, no matter some of the issues about corruption linked to the minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Beta Edu and of course allegations of who gets what from the passport issuance, apart from that one could say we have seen efforts. Of course able to engage publicly, communicating well. He has done something good enough to say he should stay. If you look at the FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, we have seen upgrades in some of the roads in the FCT in terms of city. In my view those optics count. So people who drive from point A to B willrealise that the roads have been made smoother. But again, it is just like having Port Harcourt in my view in Rivers State if you look at the FCT and ask, is he transforming? Have seen lights across some suburbs, security being okay, are you seeing roads that are not in the city centres being opened or upgraded, are you seeing proactive management for impacts in terms of those who live outside the Asokoro, Wuse, Garki areas, in my view, no. I think there should be identity in terms of the things that can attract human capital, in terms of dealing with traffic congestion, the basic things that make a city, as a source of wealth creation. City branding that brands one city differently, and people can come in, say this holiday we want to come to Abuja from West African countries. Is Abuja becoming that kind of crystal child? No. Of course important political work that he’s doing for the presidency in annihilating the PDP, it’s a banker that he willstay. Umahi has done well in the area of road projects that the government has flagged off, energy moving around, he is doing well in the media. Looking at what they have done, after that you will go back to see how well they have done, and so on and so forth. You can go back into deeper reviews. Dave Umahi will pass for those who have performed in that context. I think that these three people I can bet my money will be in the team. For politics they are close to the president and some of them have key work to do for the president and they have done more than average compared with others in terms of options and some level of activities and programmes.
There are some criticisms that cabinetreshuffle is more about political calculations as opposed to performance. How much of these potential issues is driven by political considerations as opposed to genuine performance issues?
I think it should be a mixture of both genuine commitments toperformance, the government has failed, forget the propaganda, whether it is economic, social, security, managing the diversity, there is basically no area that I can say this government has really performed according to its promises and expectations. So within the reality that the government is underperforming grossly that people are now comparing it to Buhari’s administration and even saying Buhari is better. I think there is a strong urgency to fix things and that will feed into decisions on who to drop and who gets on board. I will say 30 to 40 percent of the consideration will be on performance. When you rejig the cabinet to get better. Maybe in the area of economy, the area is failing the most in terms of high cost of living, poverty misery index, economic related areas, those areas are also manned by persons who are politically entrenched. What willneed the most change is the place we have the least change in my view. But again the bulk of the change willbe political because these are the people that are in that team and not persons from the south east, not the main area that Asiwaju have full control. The South west team may likely remain intact except for few who are not directly his appointees who will be positioned for removal because they are political lightweight that may not contribute much to his second term aspiration. So we could see some changes in that direction and maybe they bring in new alignment happening in terms of politics. No outreaches to areas that are probably critical in the second term bid in reshaping Nigeria’s political landscape. So I will give it to 30 or 40on performance and 70 or 60 for political strategic thinking.
Are we going to see any change in this inspired optimism because it looks more like cosmetic, change of face, won’t this cabinet reshuffle bring anything meaningful for Nigerians without complementary amendment or looking at some key policies that have landed us where we are now?
Three components to development policy, the first is institutions, the bureaucracy in terms of capability, competence the civil service, the support staff in the villa. The second one is policies and the third is the personnel, in terms of personnel, not just the regular civil service but also in terms of the policy makers and commission. It doesn’t seem that we are going to see much changes in the personnel at the level of job appointees. Most of the offices that are critical to drive economic development and social outcomes. The person’s close to the political family mostly from the Lagos axis, not many of them are fit for those posts in terms of driving out policies and programmes, that is the problem. When I see ministerial change that clearly gives rise to talking points in terms of politics and communication then it doesn’t really deal with the issues and problems that the government faces in terms of policy choices. Are we going to pander to the IMF, World Bank? Are we going to play smart, use the market to cover realistically to check boldly around outcomes and to face difficult policies in a manner that suggests deeper knowledge about the economy. Are we going to see that happen? Maybe not. We have to get the right policies and the people who have the right understanding of the policy. Are we going to see now a government that is more effective in implementing the policy that may be good but is badly implemented? Involving the parastatals, agencies and departments that are critical in driving policy change, they require basic calculations and basic mindset from too much politics and loyalty in terms of those who are “my people”. Predicting what presidents do, is it performance? Is it the variable of politics that will play an effective role for re-election or decimate the opposition or play a critical role?
