Pitfalls of cabinet reshuffle

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY MAHMUD JEGA

Let us begin from the most obvious: no minister wants to be dropped from the President’s cabinet, if he or she can help it. Reports in some newspapers said as the ministers sat in the Council Chambers last Wednesday waiting for a meeting of the Federal Executive Council [FEC] to begin, five of them were told that the President wanted to see them. You can imagine how their stomachs churned, their heads were spinning, their heart beats increased, their vision became blurred, their hearing was impaired and their legs wobbled as they walked across to the President’s office. They must have looked like cows being led to the slaughter house.

The remaining 40 plus ministers who were not among the five called to the President’s office were not at ease either. How would they know if those called in were only the first batch, and that a second, possible even a third or fourth batch would later be called in for a routine “thank you for your service, I wish you success in your future endeavours” meeting? Being called to the President’s office is often unpleasant for a minister. A minister in President Obasanjo’s government told me a story of how, after a nasty exchange with a cabinet colleague at a FEC meeting that required the president’s intervention to calm matters down, the President asked him to follow him to his office. He fully expected to be sacked and regretted that he had not resigned after the hot exchange at the FEC meeting. But when he got into the President’s office, old man Obasanjo brought up something else!

Presidents, too, do not like to sack ministers. A loyal and friendly minister, once sacked, could go straight into the ranks of the president’s political enemies. Still, the clamour had been on for months, in political circles and in the news media, for President Tinubu to rejig the Federal cabinet. For different reasons. While the mass media, which claims to reflect the public mood, was demanding for changes because citizens are highly dissatisfied with the Federal Government’s current trajectory, politicians want a change so that some of the people standing outside and looking inside will get a chance to come in and be looking outside from the inside. The clamour soon graduated into a rumour that a reshuffle was impending, which the President’s spokesman later confirmed was afoot. To boot, when the President took off on a two-week break, it was said it was to afford him an opportunity to reflect on his government. Nigerians interpreted that to mean to mull on the changes he was about to make. Besides, the Presidency had sensationally said last year that Hadiza Bala Usman, the President’s Adviser on Policy Coordination, will keep a score card of ministerial performance and Tinubu himself publicly pledged to sack any minister who did not perform to expectation.

Was it wise for the Presidency to confirm late last month that a reshuffle was imminent? One can imagine that from that point, there was unease in ministerial tummies and many of them will be unable to concentrate on their duties. There will be a scramble to the houses of godfathers, party bigwigs, presidential family members, traditional rulers, clerics and even babalawos to put in a word or to throw in some incantations in order to save a job.

And why not? It was not easy to get into the cabinet in the first place. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of people all over the country were angling for the slots when the cabinet was being constituted last year. Politicians who worked hard in successful election campaigns believe they should be rewarded with ministerial posts. Some people wanted to be ministers because they were ministers before and they believe they should be ministers again. Some other people thought they should be ministers because they had never been ministers before. Still other people thought they had attained high positions in other areas of the public service or in the professions and they therefore deserve to be appointed as ministers. This last group of aspirants remind me of what Professor Godwin Soglo said at a NIPPS seminar in 1980, that acquiring education in a society where millions of others were denied the chance, or even attaining high positions in areas of public life, is a privilege and one privilege does not entitle anyone to another privilege!

The cabinet reshuffle cat was finally let out of the bag last Wednesday when five ministers were discharged, ten ministers were reassigned and seven new ones were appointed. That phrase “discharged,” which the Presidency said was the appropriate one to use instead of the “sacked” that the media was fond of, was it at all appropriate? It is given to misunderstanding. In one episode of the 1970s British sitcom Mind Your Language, the Indian Sikh student Ranjit did not come to class one day and he explained to the teacher that he had to stay at home with his brother who had just been discharged. The teacher Mr. Brown said, “Oh, from hospital.” And Ranjit said, “No, from prison.” The ministers who were discharged from the cabinet, was it from a hospital or a prison?

Was the reshuffle well worth it? Almost no one stood up in Nigeria and granted it a standing ovation. One intellectual said “it was underwhelming.” Even though the Presidency statement said it was designed to improve efficiency and performance, historically, cabinet reshuffles are used in Nigeria mostly to satisfy the public lust for blood, especially when things are not going on well. In the long years when this country was ruled by a string of Army Generals, newspapers had a habit to spreading rumours of an impending reshuffle ahead of each anniversary of the regime. This is often accompanied by suggestions of which ministers would get the sack, attributed to anonymous “informed sources close to the government” when in truth it is the wish of the reporters.

Different rulers of Nigeria handled their cabinets differently. General Babangida had some of the most accomplished technocrats as ministers but he routinely changed his cabinet, courageously so because he often changed military Service Chiefs and on one occasion, he even dissolved the Armed Forces Ruling Council. It was a complete departure from General Yakubu Gowon, who retained the same military governors [with only one change] for nine years and only changed some ministers in 1974, after seven years. General Sani Abacha, whose cabinet met once in a blue moon, sacked the first one after 15 months and made sweeping changes. President Obasanjo also made regular changes to his cabinet. The most sweeping change I remember was however made by the taciturn President Yar’adua who, after 15 months in office, sacked 20 ministers in one fell swoop. Both Presidents Jonathan and Buhari made only few and far between cabinet changes while they were at the helm.

The reasons why Presidents sack ministers are often not the ones that the public or the mass media imagine. It could be due to failure to get on well with the First Lady, or annoying a party godfather, or a protocol snafu, or rumours of going out with the wrong person. Ok, President Tinubu pledged that who stays or who goes in his cabinet was going to be based on Madam Hadiza Bala Usman’s assessment report. How did she do this assessment? As a former teacher myself, I would like to see the Marking Scheme that she used. How can you mark an exam answer sheet without a marking scheme?

When we were freshly recruited as Graduate Assistants, our wise old Head of Department Professor S.H.Z. Naqvi told us that, “A student who attends his lectures regularly, listens attentively, takes lecture notes, reads them carefully and is able to reproduce them in the exam, deserves only a C.” B, he said, is the student who goes beyond the lecture notes and reads textbooks, whereas “an A is the outstanding student,” apparently one who marshals his points in the exam better than even the lecturer could do!

Can we kindly see the score sheet of Mrs. Usman’s recorded marks? Please let is not be like the recent Local Government election in some states, where election materials arrived at the polling stations without the Result Sheets. If at all those scores were the basis for the cabinet changes, Nigerians want to see the scores of the persons in charge of fuel prices, fuel supply, food prices, transport fares, naira value, power supply, Band A power rates, ASUU and medical workers’ strikes, protracted minimum wage negotiations and its delayed implementation, as well as physical defence of communities from kidnappers and terrorists.

Pray, what was the JAMB-style Cut-Off Point for admission into the federal cabinet? Was it an A, a B, a tolerable C, or even some D scorers squeaked through? Considering that the former Minister of Education disallowed anyone under 18 from entering a higher institution, is there an age below which one cannot enter the Federal Executive Council?

What is the value of scandal in the ministerial assessment? Does it, for example, earn a minister a  Libya-style CAF punishment, a fine and deduction of points and goals scored? Ok, one minister who threatened to sue the United Nations and one minister who caused a national uproar by prioritizing entry age into higher institutions were discharged, but what was the score of the minister who completed many city infrastructure road projects but bogged down a state government and caused chaos in a Local Government election, including the burning of LGA offices? Was the assessment something like how they mark objective tests in a medical school, where for every wrong answer a student ticks, one correct answer that he ticked is subtracted?  That way, a 50% score could translate into a 0% score!

Cabinet reshuffle is a tricky art. It often buys precious political time for the Presidency, but only for a short while. The next clamour for cabinet changes will start early in May next year, because it is the Administration’s half-way mark.