An Endless Waiting Game
Michael West urges President Buhari to fast-track the appointment of board members
The perpetual shift of goalposts on the fulfilment of the electoral promises by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is fast becoming its character rather than a stigma it should fight against. Apparently, the government and its handlers think more proactively to defend their anticipated failure and inactions than doubling efforts at meeting the expectations of Nigerians. The one-meal per day promise made to parents of junior school students has been procrastinated about more than thrice already, with the government offering sundry excuses. Yet, it is nowhere near fulfilment. Trust Nigerians, they now trivialise this promise as being effectively fulfiled! How? I was told because most Nigerian families these days have one meal per day! Even reports say internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the North-east now feed only once daily. Then, how else can an electoral promise be fulfiled?
In like manner, the 200,000 jobs promised to young graduates, said to have been implemented December 1, 2016, is also believed to be hanging in the balance. Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo had announced, after a couple of postponements, that by October last year, the programme would take effect; later, it was shifted to December. Yet, the waiting game continues!
The board appointments into federal government-owned agencies and parastatals that ought to have been fully effected within three months after this administration came to power are being made piecemeal in a fashion that is inconsistent with the norms of governance elsewhere. As usual, the presidency had last December 2016 announced that President Muhammadu Buhari would make appointments into all boards by January 2017. This was confirmed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu. Although a similar promise was made on December 28, 2015, one year after, most federal government agencies are still without boards. Shehu explained that the delay was because of an issue of interest to members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), adding, “The process will be fully back on track at the beginning of the New Year.” Here we are in the third month of the year, March, yet it’s another mirage.
Recently, the chairman of Stanbic Bank Plc., Atedo Peterside, in his presentation at the 14th Daily Trust Dialogue in Abuja, lamented the absence of boards in place to regulate the affairs of federal agencies and financial institutions, which in turn is expected to stimulate fiscal policies and revive the ailing economy. “The federal government should immediately appoint directors to the boards of every regulatory agency. Keeping a Lone Wolf at the head of a regulatory agency is dangerous and therefore detri- mental to business confidence. The important lesson from the recent Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria imbroglio is that a single rogue regulator can hold the entire system to ransom, help destroy business confidence and hamper economic growth. This only became possible because the checks and balances which our laws envisaged, through the appointment of boards, council members or commissioners, were not in place.”
Unlike the usual practice, Rotimi Amaechi, Transport Minister, was said to have got the nod of Mr. President to fill up the board of agencies under his ministry. Information revealed the minister had an altercation with the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, for substituting his (Amaechi’s) candidate with the sitting chairman of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC. As at today, many of the juicy board appointments are being filled in a manner shrouded in secrecy; thanks to the nepotistic and despotic tendencies of the president, which his close aides, associates and hangers-on are latching on to for selfish advantage.
In response to the bickering silently ravaging the ruling party, the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, had frontally attacked her husband for abandoning party chieftains that toiled for his victory. “More than half of those people are not appointed into the government. Some people that are not politicians, not professionals were brought into the government. They don’t even know what we said we want and what we don’t during the campaign. They even come out and say to people ‘we are not politicians,’ but they are occupying the offices meant for politicians. Some have parted with their wives, some lost their children, some women too have parted with their husbands because of politics, a lot happened during the time,” she fumed. Not many board appointments had been made after the first lady’s outburst in a British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC’s interview conducted in Hausa about three months ago.
Competing interests from geo-political zones are said to be slowing down the president’s assent to the list prepared for the various boards. Initially, President Buhari last year October had instituted the Babachir Lawal-led committee to collate names from all the states of the federation, look at the credentials of the nominees and then advise the president on where they should be placed. The committee however identified the current economic recession, security clearance and federal character balancing as some of the reasons for the delay in constituting the boards. A number of recommendations were said to have been turned down by the Presidency, which is still considering complaints from top APC chieftains, traditional rulers and groups across the country. Also, Presidency officials are said to be attending to tonnes of petitions in respect of the pending board appointments.
How long it will take to finally release the remaining list of appointments and how fairly the few juicy ones will be evenly distributed remain to be known. On why President Buhari has not been so decisive on the remaining appointments, a presidency official said the conflict of interests had to be resolved to avoid embarrassment and further division within the APC family. The delay has led to grumblings within the ruling party across the country. Supporters and chieftains of the APC, who worked for the success of the party during the 2015 general elections, lamented they had laboured in vain, having successfully wrestled power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The party stakeholders deserve to be compensated after working so hard to install this government but it appears they are left not only in the cold but have also been left to suffer the excruciating economic downturn as many of them claimed they invested their resources in the campaign activities that eventually ousted PDP from power. APC members have accused their party leaders at all levels of not doing enough to compensate them. “They are weak. It seems they don’t have the guts to tell the president of the dangers of leaving the APC faithful redundant,” Yunusa Aliyu from Kano was quoted to have said.
Meanwhile, allegations of bribery had been openly leveled against the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir Lawal. Financial inducements reportedly played a determinant factor about who gets what as many of the recommendations from the states and zones were said to have been flagrantly altered when they got to the SGF’s office. But the SGF had since denied the allegation, saying he did not receive kickbacks from candidates seeking board appointments. Tainted by controversies and lack of trust in the Lawal committee, a Bukola Saraki-led team is reviewing the list all over again for the president’s assent.
I think the problem with this issue of board appointments lies squarely with the president. The excuses for delay are not tenable if, almost two years into this administration, an integral accomplishment like board appointments is yet to be fully put in place. The reason for this lackluster style of governance is because Mr. President does not know or trust people enough for such appointments. Buhari failed to build network of contacts across the Niger. He scarcely knows good people beyond his base in the north. All the while, whenever he ran for election and lost, he had quietly recoiled into his shell until another four years.