Breaking News
NIGERIA’S SHAKERS AND LOSERS
The ministerial quintet of Uju kennedy Ohanenye, Lola Ade-John, Tahir Mamman, Abdullahi Muhammad Gwarzo and Jamila Bio Ibrahim may have finally won the sack race for the Federal Executive Council, but it is doubtful they were the worst performers in a government that has generally lacked spine and sauce. It is further doubtful that their replacements, beyond being strategic appointments for political reasons, would bring much to the table.
At long last, what was mooted and muted for so long has hit the megaphones eliciting mixed reactions from Nigerians. The president has finally reshuffled his cabinet after 18 months in office. While merging some existing ministries to create space for some new ones, the president also sacked five ministers while bringing in seven new ministers.
At a glance, the rejig would appear aimed at improving efficiency, but in removing Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye from the ministry of Women Affairs and Tahir Mamman SAN, from the Ministry of Education, the president blundered his way into another decision.
In Uju Ohanenye’s case, after many years of middling leadership, the Ministry of Women Affairs long relegated to the back waters of the Federal Executive Council was finally showing some belated teeth thanks to the lawyer, entrepreneur, and movie producer. All-action and no-nonsense, the former minister showed from the beginning that she was ready to challenge and call out many issues that did not sit well with her.
One of her most critical interventions came when the speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Abdulmalik Sarkin Daji conspired with some traditional rulers in Marita to sponsor the somewhat forced marriages of teenage girls whose parents had been killed by terrorists.
Uju Ohanenye’s histrionic intervention was to blow up the matter, turning it into a national debate. The girls later got married, but it was under much more improved circumstances thanks to the former minister.
The minister had hardly settled in office when it became clear that there were powerful forces determined to cut short her stay in office. It is unfortunate that president Tinubu has yielded to those forces of retrogression to fire the minister Nigerian women need so badly. Her battles were a sign that she was ready to step on toes and challenge the status quo. She may have paid the price for being different, but despite her flaws and the boulders thrown at her by the legion of those without sin, it is difficult to remember a Minister who was as eager as she was to shake up things under this insipid government.
At the ministry of education, attempts by the urbane and humane Tahir Mamman, a professor, senior advocate of Nigeria and former director general of the Nigerian Law School to shake up things may have cost him his job. There were a couple of policies whose true promise was soon lost in the haze of hysteria whipped up by those who have made a profession out of wailing and making others wail.
In a country where education continues to travel only in one direction — down — Mamman has learned the reason for the slide in a harsh way. There are many who do not want things to change in the education sector. This people will resist change with everything they have got.
Nigerians did not vote for any of the sacked ministers in 2023 or for those that have remained for that matter. Every appointment comes along with a prerogative to dis-appoint. Given the vicissitudes of political appointments in Nigeria and the volatile vagaries of politics in Nigeria, people will come and go. So no one can cry more than is necessary over the sacked ministers. At the end of the day, the buck rests on President Tinubu’s table.
It is he who must form a winning team to dig Nigeria out of the hole he has somehow contrived to deepen. How he does it is his business as long as the country works. But the evidence so far is that things are not working out fine. The roar of discontent rattling the four corners of the country more than confirms it.
The surprisingly embarrassing performance of his government in office has compounded the misery Nigerians sunk into during the eight torturous years his predecessor spent in office. It is time to create a ministry to manage the misery of Nigerians and appoint a minister to handle what has become a national emergency.
In a country where government parastatals and their parasitic existence are used as a sop to political, religious and ethnic interests, no one ministers to anyone but themselves.
Kene Obiezu,
