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Now that the experts and critics have had their well-paid ‘says’, this is just Citizen Sam having his say– from a safe distance far away. The following ratings of the Ministers and members of the 2015/2016 Executive Council of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria under the leadership of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and President Muhammadu Buhari are based on a secret recipe my mother developed.
It avoids like the plague the trap of exploring how well the Ministers have performed. Rather, it focuses on how well Nigerians or each Minister’s beat have ‘performed’ because of ministrations clearly attributable to the exertions of the Minister. It is also unique for its shameless avoidance of jargon and well, statistics.
Each Minister is rated on a scale of 1 – 10 because most of us can count that far. A short explanation where deemed necessary is provided. There is a “Sack Quotient” on the same 1-10 scale. High is bad (likely to be/should be sacked): Low is good (job still safe). An average of the Ministers’ cumulative score plus 3 extra points – for the war against corruption; international diplomatic efforts; and low nuisance values of the wives of the President and Vice President – gives the overall Score of the Muhammadu Buhari/Yemi Osinbajo led Federal Cabinet so far
1. Ministry of Labour & Employment
Minister of State: James Ocholi
Score: 10/10
Comment: He is dead. This is Africa [Sighs]
Sack Quotient: 0/10
2. Ministry of Labour & Employment
Minister: Chris Ngige
Score: 0/10
Comment: He has been missing in action, essentially – probably still in shock over the demise of his colleague. But, the fear during Ngige’s screening for the office of Minister –he came colourfully arrayed – was that he may not be able to stay off the headlines. But, incredulously, in a season where hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in the private sector have been losing their jobs right left and centre, at a time when many are being owed salaries upwards of one year, even with States in the south-east constantly in the news for various reasons – none of them good – owing to youth restiveness, the voice of the nation’s Labour and Employment minister had chosen such a season to learn quietude. The rambunctious politician of the past seems to have gone AWOL while various battles of wit overt several ‘tough’ policies which invited industrial actions and had employment implications for millions of Nigerians were being waged. If he is not sick and physically incapacitated, then Ngige needs to really wake up. A repeat visit to Okija shrine may not be recommended but, clearly, Minister Ngige needs consult something to reshape what he believes constitute his brief. His Ministry is critical – especially in upholding the dignity of the Nigerian employee, youth and families in both the private and public sector – if the nation is to successfully navigate the tough bend it has found itself in. So far, Nigerians are not feeling him at all.
Sack Quotient: 4/10
3. Ministry: Solid Minerals
Minister: Kayode Fayemi
Minister of State: Abubakar Bawa Bwari
Score: 3/10
Comment: Mono-economy, beating Nigeria off the mono-economic beat is the favourite theme of the present administration. One of its articulate voices is Kayode Fayemi and one of its most viable options for achieving the vaunted diversification the Solid Minerals segment. To his credit, Fayemi has been delivering reams of articulate visions of what he deems ‘possible’ or ‘necessary’. But that’s, some say, the chief problem many had with Fayemi as Governor of Ekiti State: staying too long at the drawing board till it becomes the alpha and omega. If there is one sector needed to produce and produce quick for Nigeria and get the Buhari administration celebrating something, it is Fayemi’s beat. In the next one year, policy-speak would get him no marks again. This cycle, it is hard to begrudge him.
Sack Quotient: 1/10
4. Ministry of State, Petroleum
Minister: Ibe Kachikwu
Score: -5/10
Comment: That’s right, he earns a negative score for working too hard just to take the nation in a merciless merry-less scatter-head circus terminating at the junction where each Nigerian is, more or less, told to carry his own cross. To be nice, Kachikwu seems to have again demonstrated that high intellect and hard work may not be the chief virtues required to straddle Nigeria’s oil and gas segment: street-wit, lateral insight as to its multiversal stakeholder profile and familiarity with the multi-agency collaboration needed to keep it working in good and bad times may just be as important as the first two but certainly nowhere as important as demonstrable capacity for compassion, empathy and basic humanity for the people serviced by that segment.
He is not a lost cause though but he clearly has a lot of making up to do for Nigerians to regain their confidence that he is no more than a well-educated and well-intentioned private sector oil executive lacking in the earthy street-wits needed to fight off militants and cabals to deliver liberty to his country men in a key area of their life. For, more than any other Minister, Kachikwu’s work may have unwittingly exposed the weakest underbelly of this government. Like: can any Nigerian government fight smuggling – even at the cost of throwing the wellbeing of the majority of citizens under the bus? Can this government do better at protecting critical national asserts and the citizenry than seems to apply in the protection of the oil pipelines? Can this government enforce the laws of the land better than the NNPC/DPR did enforcing ‘fixed’ prices for PMS in the past 12 months? More worrying is this query elicited by NNPC/Petroleum Ministry failings in the passed year: can this government do the basic its immediate predecessor proved too inept at: enforce its campaign promises regardless of the opposition ranged against it? Kachikwu’s work thus far hints at a No as answer for some of those questions except the government comes out of the shock it seems to be in with the realization that it has campaigned itself into one of the most complex job in the world today – made doubly so by its super-inept and corrupt predecessor. Kachikwu’s recent attitude to the pressure of his work – irritation, insensitivity and aloofness disguised as dispassionate rendering of life-changing (for the worse) policy communications have cost his government massively in public goodwill. May be, Ahmed Tinubu ordaining himself Kachikwu’s public communications sensitivity correction guru may help – because Nigerians are beginning to worry.
Sack Quotient: 4/10
5. Ministry of Agriculture
Minister – Audu Ogbeh
Minister of State – Heineken Lokpobiri
Score: 4/10
Comment: Food prices have gone through the roof – across board. The tomatoes harvest for 2016 have been nearly destroyed by a scourge. Cattle rearers seem to have been afflicted not just with mad cow disease but a strain of it which pushes its victims to kill whole communities of beef-loving humans so as to secure access to grass. Even the President has weighed in endlessly on this beat: says too much of our foreign exchange goes to import of dinning table or stomach related matters – including toothpicks from China. But now, we have no foreign exchange to fund food again. So, hope and common sense says give Audu Ogbeh a high-rating – not as a commendation for job already done, rather as a solemn exchange impaling him to deliver on a job that must be done without excuses! People must eat. Repeat: if Audu Obeh does not come up with a Joseph wisdom to deliver food to his country -very soon, there could be fewer Nigerians reading the next rating of this cabinet. Hunger is stalking our land and we can afford high ratings for this Minister if that will get him working with the urgency the situation requires.
Sack Quotient: 1/10
6. Ministry of Power, Works and Housing
Minister – Babatunde Fashola
Score: 0/10
Comments: Many stunts were thrown in the way of Fashola becoming Minister, both the ridiculous and the disturbing – but here he is: the very Super-Minister of this administration. Superman saves the day – but, this Fashola has not saved the Day. The bulbs still can barely wink. Nigerians are still paying extortionate energy bills monthly for nothing – or, as some say, for sunlight and malaria inducing heat at night. Housing – of any finished type – has gone beyond the means of the majority of so-called middle-class families. The poor were already on the street (he ‘deported quite a number of them as Governor and so is very much aware). And if there are anything in the Works component of his work, only time and the stale but new budget will tell. Time is not what Nigerians has got. If Fashola succeeds, even a little, the difference that would make is incalculable. He hasn’t, yet.
Sack Quotient: 2/10
6a. Minister of State, Power: Mustapha Baba Shehuri
Score: -5/10
Comment: The power sector has done poorly in the past one year. This junior Minister specifically tasked with that power beat deserves a full beat-up in this rating. Even more than the Senior Minister tasked with 3 monsters. His task is to sleep, live and eat power till his hair stands on air with megawatts of statics. By now, we should have heard about the mega-nuisance he is made of himself pestering the Senior Minister and the President. The implication of electricity energy for Nigeria’s development, especially diversifying away from its infamous tag as a mono-economy –whether real or a convenient myth – is something everyone knows. He has not delivered – whatever may have been his efforts: Increasing private generator noises (regardless of the prohibitive cost of PMS) and the escalating number of children falling sick due to heat and malaria are enough damning evidence.
Sack Quotient: 6/10
7. Ministry of Women Affairs
Minister: Aisha Alhassan
Score: 0/10
Comment: She wanted to be the First Elected ‘Woman’ Governor of Nigeria but got appointed the No. 1 Policy Maker and Defender for women connected issues in Nigeria: which is really every issue. But, if the vigour and creativity she has brought to her job is the one she planned to take to the office of Governor of Taraba, then fate, sorry, the Supreme Court, might have dealt Tarabans a good hand. When two Chibok girls were allegedly found, guess who was missing in action – missing even the free photo-op opportunity? When communities were attacked and the most vulnerable people killed, guess who did not see it as her beat? Food prices are doubling across the country, farming is coming back into the spotlight – and yet women are not being pitched as the ‘issue’ in all of those? Salaries have not been paid for months by many State governments across Nigeria and somebody’s voice is lost, unfortunately? Probably, Aisha believes she is better at signing checks than stewarding life-changing advocacy and policy initiatives tied to heavy national budgets for the good of about 100 million person. Why not put her out of the misery?
Sack Quotient: 9/10
8. Ministry of Communication
Minister: Adebayo Shittu
Score: 1/10
Comment: The highlight of his tenure has been his recent presentation before the National Assembly where he ‘gave’ it to them. His Ministry needs more budgetary allocation but gets pittance, he claimed. The lesser the amount allocated to the ‘communication’ sector in the national budget is not just an indicator of its estimation on national policy tables but is a real limiter of its growth, he bellowed. Not so. If there is one ministry which needs very little more than a sound, creative and passionate Minister, it is his. If there is one area where private sector money will easily go to do the bidding of public sector policy visions, it is his. The capacity to engage the youth of this nation; the opportunity to influence the educational destiny of Nigeria is his for the taking. So far, not so good. Especially disconcerting is his ‘take’ of what is possible without more money at a time when cost-cutting is not just being recommended but is the only cup to drink from.
Sack Quotient: 7/10
9. Ministry for Youth and Sports
Minister: Solomon Dalong
Score: -9/10
Comment: Almost no comment (except on his dress sense. That has no place in Sports. It aint cool, totally.). Sports was a disaster before he got there. It has since gotten comfortable staying a ‘disaster’.
Sack Quotient: 10/10
10. Ministry of Interior
Minister: Abdulrahman Dambazau-
Score: 5/10
Comment: Action is not the issue in this Ministry and the parastatals connected to it. The issue is getting the frenzied activities going on here to line up with Constitutional imperatives. One comes easily to mind: the DSS. It is beginning to over-reach itself and if not reined in would soon cause the government, if not the whole nation, a notable embarrassment. Specifically, journalists are being targeted and innocent families are being made dispensable pawns in the high-stakes game with over-empowered criminals in high-places of yester-years: that needs to stop. We must build a nation which security operatives are seized of respect for the lives, limbs and livelihoods of decent and law abiding citizens primarily: to the point that those would not be compromised even in mortal combats with pernicious criminal elements hiding among decent folks.
Sack Quotient: 3/10
11. Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General
Minister: Abubakar Malami
Score: 6/10
Comment: Defence lawyers, instead of the prosecution, are now the ones crying foul in Nigeria. That’s really new and says a lot about the current Attorney General. Any fight against corruption in the past had become dead on arrival due to the superior legal firepower –credential and creativity – which has somehow always aggregated on the side of the alleged corrupt elements to the detriment of Team Nigeria. This time around, at least, the balance of creativity seems to have shifted even to the point that people who are afraid but connected are attempting or seeking brazen legislative ‘amendments’ to keep their ongoing or upcoming in the ‘game’. It is no longer prosecutors crying against ‘loopholes’ in the law – often imagined than real to save face. Reason: there seems to have now emerged a corps of prosecutors with a sense of self-worth who are fighting for Nigeria – who are ready to deploy borderline legal tools or schemes of debatable legitimacy – if not legality – to keep their cases going: something that has been missing for far too long.
The need to significantly reform of the judiciary – a generally acknowledged stronghold of corrupt and criminal elements in the country’s justice administration complex – remains barely scratched on the surface but there can be no argument that it is on course because developing a corps of able and well qualified prosecutors who can transition to the Bench is a part of that happening to upstage the bad practice of shooing in lackeys and cronies of politicians which yielded the present Bench. Twelve months hence, having the bad guys on the back foot, whining, will no longer be enough. Securing convictions with suitable consequences for some of the high-profile corruption cases currently ongoing – as well as securing the prosecution of so many others currently hibernating in National Assembly and abroad will become the greatest parameter with which this Attorney General will be rated. We have had too many failures in that office: would not be bad to get one fairly moderate success in 20 years.
Sack Quotient: 2/10
12. Ministry of the Niger Delta
Minister: Pastor Usani Uguru
Minister of State: Cladius Omoleye Daramola
Score: 0/10
Comment: His region is burning again and that’s unacceptable for a man who knew from day one that his party had lost direct political influence – from the Governor’s Office – over every single State bar one in the region: effectively making him and the leadership of key federal agencies like NDDC, NIMASA, etc the pivot of federal influence in the region. So far, the creativity displayed in the engagement of that region so as to cultivate the majority of its people as partners in development with the current Federal Government does not seem to be happening. In fact, it seems like the opposite is deliberately being orchestrated regardless of its very steep costs in lives, destinies and opportunities.
Sack Quotient: 7/10
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13. Ministry of Education
Minister: Adamu Adamu
Minister of State: Prof Anthony Onwuka
Score: 0/10
Comment: No comment
Sack Quotient: 9/10
14. Ministry of Health
Minister: Isaac Adewole –
Minister of State: Osagie Ehanire
Score: -1/10
Comment: No comment
Sack Quotient: 10/10
15. Ministry of Water Resources
Minister: Suleiman Adamu
Score: 0/10
Comment: More Nigerians, daily, are signing on to the ‘Pure’ water sachet phenomenon. The ability to marshal Nigeria’s enormous water resources to the aid of the energy crisis in the country saw red – zero, zilch, nada – within the same period. Enough said.
Sack Quotient: 7/10
16. Ministry of Budget & National Planning
Minister: Udo Udo Udoma
Minister of State: Zainab Ahmed
Score: -5/10
Comment: Who was responsible for that avoidable budget-padding mess? Not me, says the senior Minister. ‘Bureaucrats’, ‘Legislators’, bla-bla-bla. But, it happened. And it was terrible. And your job was to secure the exact opposite. Terrible that there was even a discussion as to who should have owned that national ignominy. The idea that the Minister of ‘National Planning’ only steps in to save the day – instead of proactively stewarding the integrity of the budgeting and other planning processes of the federal government is a scary one. That, unfortunately, has been the highlight of that office in the past one year. Two ministers of Budget and National Planning have no business not tendering their resignations after the fiasco they orchestrated over the 2016 budget. They owe Nigerians big.
Sack Quotient: 5/10
17. Ministry of Transportation
Minister: Rotimi Amaechi –
Score: 0/10
Comment: When he delivers, every Nigerian will feel it. He has delivered nothing, yet. Meanwhile, the very exact hope Nigerians had, as to the direction the Niger Delta will take if he is the face of the region in the Buhari cabinet, the exact opposite of that hope is unfolding. Seems his APC-connected political followers really have bought into the ‘jungle-larisation’ of the whole Niger Delta so that their lionization of him can fit better. However, Amaechi would do himself and his political legacy a lot of good by not just focusing on how to deliver as ‘Transport Minister’ – but the more important task of helping Buhari mobilise the Niger Delta for development suitable for human beings including children, women and decent law abiding ‘men’. It is not looking good at all right now and he commands all the President’s arms in there.
Sack Quotient: 2/10
18. Ministry of Aviation
Minister: Sen Hadi Sirika
Score: 1/10
Comment: Seems like the airports have not gotten worse than they were: terrible.
Sack Quotient: 4/10
19. Ministry of Trade, Investment & Industry
Minister: Okechukwu Enelamah
Minister of State: Aisha Abubakar
Score: 1/10
Comment: Probably, the most citizens inter-phasing Ministry for an administration which campaigned on a platform to tackle youth unemployment and insecurity. One year in, a ‘new’ budget, still evolving monetary policies, yo-yo economic key pillars and a ‘floating’ foreign exchange rate means that the work of this Ministry is now seeded inside a flux. It is doing a lot – some of which may require time to see while a large part may lead nowhere [like its predecessors over the last 16 years] except to the bank with only ‘economic’/’enterprise’ consultants smiling. It is a bad place it needs to escape real quick. Its next one year will make or mar the leadership of this Ministry.
Sack Quotient: 3/10
20. Ministry of Finance
Minister: Kemi Adeosun
Score: 6/10
Comment: Besides the Vice President, she is by far the most articulate member of the Executive Council, able to make her policy points –the big picture her government is about – convincingly without offending her audience. After donkey years of being hoodwinked by the trusted, well-credentialed but ineffectual –and some say, corruption enabling – Okonjo Iweala, at a time when every Nigerian knew that the economy she inherited and currently stewards is in total shambles due to clearly avoidable missteps and decadent corrupt practices of the last 16 years, only a fool, or a courageous steward, or a foolish but professionally suicidal patriot would have dared undertake the brief assigned to her. But she did – regardless of the scorn of the naysayers. That’s a massive point in her favour. Another is that, for good or for bad, the economic policies emanating from her beat is annoying too many experts who cannot themselves lay claim to any antecedent of economic prescriptions which augured well for the nation or any of the private/independent entities they have ‘advised’ in the country over the last 50 years. If somehow by a quirk of fate, strange happen–chance or strategic planning, economic variables align in her favour in the coming years as to really do what her predecessors never achieved, that is, touch the lives of real people outside the corridors of power, she will be on course to becoming one of the most sought after voices in Nigeria for economic wisdom. For now, she sure does need her ever-present hair extensions so as to cover what damages or greying is happening to the real one below (as she casts about for answers at a time when every ‘expert’ economic needs her to fail to justify their past serial failings).
Sack Quotient: 7/10
21. Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Minister: Geoffrey Onyema
Minister of State: Hajia Khadija Bukar Ibrahim
Score: 5/10
Comment: No argument: on May 29, 2015, Nigeria was damaged goods internationally and municipally as an international sovereignty able to project respect under which its citizens could find shade abroad. May 29, 2016, the verdict is in. It is this: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has done a good job using the President and strategic global platforms to do what thousands of well-paid international brand strategists would have been required to do to even make a dent on what was a big challenge. A lot more is required of them in the next 3 years but there can be no denying this: the country’s image has changed positively in the past 12 months doing the exact opposite of what many ‘experts’ claimed were needed to accomplish even a fraction of the delivered outcome. Now even the British Prime Minister gets an instant reminder from no less a personality than the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury not to use corrupt ornamental adjectives on Nigeria without qualifications. The challenge now is how to scale the achievements to the next level.
Sack Quotient: 3/10
22. Ministry of the Environment
Minister: Amina Mohammed
Minister of State: Ibrahim Usman Jibril
Score: 1/10
Comment: Rivers State government recently made a public request to be part of the Ogoniland Clean-up project. That is a request that should never have arisen if the Ministry of Environment is passionate about its mandate, beyond the politics of the day or tomorrow. Beyond remediation, the greater mandate of ensuring proactive compliance with existing environmental standards does not seem to be getting a tenth of the ‘campaign’ the overdue remediation effort in one tiny corner of the Niger Delta seems to be getting. The very poor library of the relevant agencies under the Ministry, the almost impossible access to copies of basic standards published by the Ministry for ‘sale’ to Nigerians outlining mandatory standards for various socio-economic activities up till now does not preach ‘change’ in this over-under-estimated Ministry.
Sack Quotient: 6/10
23. Ministry of Defence
Minister: Dan Ali
Score: 5/10
Comment: Can Africa’s largest economy and most populated nation defend itself from non-super-power military attack? One year ago, the answer was a pathetic and scary No. After all, a rag-tag army of education hating insurgents had brought the nation to its knees turning the nation’s once highly-regarded armed forces into a bad joke. The natural result was that every little or start-up gang, from IPOB to Niger Delta militants scaled their once neighbourhood or radio-station operations into ‘national’ armed agitations. Twelve calendar months down the lane, Nigeria’s military seems to have again returned as one of the top five sovereign military in Africa – and not without its once dreaded excesses. Fact: frontal battle with Nigerian soldiers is no longer a savoury past-time for any insurgent group. Can the leadership of Nigeria’s military be made amenable to the accountable framework of a constitutional democracy? The past 12 months has helped to answer that question as vile corruption among the top echelon of its leadership has, for the first time ever, been subjected to the jurisdiction of regular courts of the land thereby deepening Nigeria’s democracy. Unjust treatment of the military’s rank and file which was rife under the Jonathan presidency has been significantly de-institutionalized with several unjust convictions of junior officers by Military Tribunals for war related offences reviewed. In so many ways, the Nigerian military seems to be adjusting as one more part of an accountable governance platform in a democratizing nation – even though a lot still needs to be done with regards to its human rights records in combat territories/situations.
Sack Quotient: 3/10
24. Ministry of Federal Capital Territory
Minister: Muhammadu Bello
Score: 3/10
Comment: There has been no scandal from that office yet .That is news. The Minister has largely maintained a low profile. That’s another news. The FCT, Abuja even held its Local Council Areas elections successfully, unlike so many other states in Nigeria.
Sack Quotient: 2/10
25. Ministry of Information
Minister: Lai Mohammed.
Score: -5/10
Comment: Is Lai Mohammed a one-trick pony? A man who can slug it out in the insult fests which make up campaign battles in Nigeria but is totally ineffective at mobilising the nation behind his President to deliver posterity honouring developments? The last one year, if that’s all Lai has got, says yes. Complemented by the President’s two aloof media aides and the Vice-President’s invisible media team, policy communications in Nigeria have become notable for its confusion – and insensitivity. The confusion generated from the bungling of each policy communication opportunity, in fact, has made more news to the point of becoming the news, than the policy item which informed each of them in the first place. A corollary to the failings of the Buhari information henchmen is a seeming failure to transition from the campaign season required profiling, or targeting or stereotyping of Nigerians as “PDP or APC” to the post-inauguration appreciation of Nigerians [except political party operatives] as no more than citizens who have a right to demand for answers regardless of their assumed or even demonstrated motives. And except that changes, Lai and the presidential media aides would be the death of the goodwill of this administration.
Sack Quotient: 9/10
(Sam Eleanya, social entrepreneur and author is the facilitator of Nigerian ConstitutionHub, Standards & Enterprise Development Center, Children & Women Law Project and www.LawNigeria.com (currently under redevelopment)
