Presidency: Cabinet Reshuffle to Be Evidence-based on Ministers’ Performance

* Tinubu directs ministers to publicise administration’s stewardship 

* Says it won’t intervene in NNPCL/Dangote petrol price war

Deji Elumoye in Abuja 

The Presidency on Wednesday confirmed that President Bola Tinubu will soon reshuffle his 47-man cabinet.

It, however, explained that the exercise, which may be carried out before or after Independence Day on October 1, will be evidence-based as President Tinubu will be aided in his decision by public opinions that have been empirically extracted.

The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, made this known while addressing newsmen at the State House, Abuja.

Onanuga, who was in company with the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Digital and New Media, O’tega Ogra, said there is no timeline to when President Tinubu will reshuffle his cabinet which was inaugurated in August 2023.

He disclosed that the president had indicated his plan to reshuffle his cabinet, but said he could not be categorical about when he will do it. 

His words: “I don’t have any timeline. The president has expressed his desire to reshuffle his cabinet and he will do it. I don’t know whether he’s going to do it before October 1, but he will surely do it. So that’s what I will say. He has not given us any timeline he’ll do it, but he will to do it. He has expressed his plan he wants to do it.”

Shedding more light on the planned cabinet shake-up, Ogra explained that the president would be guided by an empirical process, making reference to the performance indicator, which is being coordinated by the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination and head of the Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Hajia Hadiza Bala Usman.

According to him, “We also need to realize that the president’s decision to reshuffle is also based on empirical evidence. He has said it during the retreat for the ministers that they were going to have periodic reviews, and the decisions that are extracted from these reviews will be used to make that final decision. 

“I know he’s gotten a couple of reports, and as Mr. Onanuga said, when he’s ready to do that, I believe he will.”

The president has also instructed his ministers to actively promote the accomplishments of his administration.

According to Onanuga, President Tinubu directed the ministers to go out and publicize the administration’s successes.

He said: “The president has given an order to all his ministers at the last Federal Executive Council meeting to go out there and speak about the activities of his administration. 

“Some of them have been media shy, television shy, radio shy, and he wants them to overcome all that and go out there and speak about what they have been doing.

“Because the feeling out there is that government is not doing enough and the government has been doing a lot. It is up to them to go out there and blow their own trumpet. They should go out there and talk about what their ministries have been doing.”

The Federal Government on Wednesday also washed its hands off the petrol pump pricing face-off between the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and private refinery, Dangote Refinery, saying both parties are at liberty to determine their  market prices for consumers.

Onanuga, who made government’s position known to newsmen, explained that since the petroleum market has been deregulated, both Dangote and NNPCL, as oil refiners and marketers, are allowed to operate according to economic market forces and set their prices for petrol, also known as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).

Such scenario, he stated, would be beneficial to Nigerian consumers in the end as competitive alternatives and pricing war tend to force prices down.

According to Onanuga, “The PMS price regime has been deregulated. Dangote is a private company. NNPCL should not forget it’s a limited liability company. 

“Whatever controversy both of them are having is their own problem. Even if you go by the terms of the Petroleum Industry Act, NNPCL is on its own. Even though it’s owned by the Federal Government, the state government and local councils and everything, it is operating as a limited liability company. 

“You can see that the private marketers have said that they find the NNPC or Dangote price too much for them, and they may resort  to importing fuel. 

“It is the consumers who benefit if a price war starts. If NNPC fuel is too much, the public market can go to the market and bring in their own fuel and sell at the price that they think is very reasonable and profitable for them. 

“So, government is not dabbling into this controversy. Dangote is running a private company working on his own, and NNPC is a limited liability company that has the right to fix the price of its own product.”

Currently, the lowest pump price of petrol is N895 per litre, even as NNPCL and Dangote squabble over the exact cost at which the former buys the product from the latter, which not long ago opened its multi billion dollar refinery in Lekki, Lagos.