23rd June, 2015
By Vitus Ozoke
I have read some of my friends knock President Muhammadu Buhari for not having appointed ministers three weeks after he has been inaugurated president. They interpret that as a major proof that Buhari is not ready to lead. Nothing can be further from the truth than that.
Constitutionally, Buhari is not required to appoint ministers. He could run his government without ministers. Why not? What good has come out of ministers? Lately, some might even argue always, ministers have become a source of national embarrassment and a conduit for corrupt fleecing of the commonwealth. Let’s do a quick math. Point out one Nigerian who has served as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Look at his worth before he became minister. Before he became minister, how many houses did he own, locally and internationally? How many cars did he have in his fleet? How many bank accounts, locally and internationally, did he own? How much did he have in each account? How much was he constitutionally entitled to as a minister? Put all that together for the number of years and months he served as minister.
Now, go back and reevaluate all those – now that he is out of office. If you are able to reconcile and balance the math between then, during, and after, call me what Doyin Okukpe wanted to be called if Buhari won the presidential election. Expensive bet, right? Yeah, but I could make that bet because I am 110% confident that you will not find one former minister whose conduct in office lends itself to such a balanced and reconciled account. Simply stated, every former minister in Nigeria in the past thirty years, perhaps longer, is corrupt. And I stake that claim, knowing full well its legal implications. I could be sued for defamation, if I was wrong. But I am not wrong, and I challenge any past minister in the past thirty years, perhaps longer, to sue me for libel. But it’s not gonna happen. So, I’m good. But the point is made: ministers, in some major ways, have been part of the problem, not the solution. Why do we need them?
It has been three weeks since Buhari has been president – without ministers, and our national wheel has not ground to a screeching halt. Which tells me that Nigeria could actually be run without the extra cost, distraction, and fanfare of ministers. How have the ministries and parastatals functioned in the last three weeks – and counting, without ministers? They have done very well. In the absence of political appointees, called ministers, career civil servants in the rank of permanent secretaries have competently held the forte, and the engine of government has not gone into hiccups. So, why do we need ministers?
Seriously, why does a country like Nigeria need ministers, if ministers are almost always corrupt and a conduit for capital flight? Ministers are necessary but not essential. They are not essential for the proper functioning of government, but they are necessary for the political identity of the ruling party. The party that wins elections stamps its identity all over the land by planting its members and loyalists as ministers. It is a tool of political propagation. Ministers help advance the philosophy and vision of the ruling party. And it’s not just a Nigerian thing; it is a global practice.
In the United States, they are called secretaries, and they are drawn mostly, if not exclusively, from the party that also occupies the White House. When an American president has tried to be inclusive, even if marginally, by appointing a secretary out of the other party, like Obama did with few Republican experiments, those experiments have not gone particularly well. The ungrateful traitors have gone on to unleash the worst forms of partisan attack on their former boss, just to sell books.
So, yes, the only need for ministers is to stamp partisan identity of the ruling party on the entire political landscape. That was okay until it stopped being okay. That was okay when all it did was confer partisan identity on the party that won the presidential election. But it stopped being okay the moment ministers became not just a ‘settlement’ and reward tool, but also a severed nerve in a haemorrhaging nation. Not only do ruling parties use ministerial, ambassadorial, and other cadres of political appointments as currencies of political settlement, they now use them for corrupt enrichment.
So, do we still need ministers? Let’s see what the Constitution of the land says about ministers. Section 147(1) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) reads: “There shall be such offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation as may be established by the President”. Interesting provision, isn’t it? What that section means is that there are no constitutionally established ministers of government. Ministers are purely the creations of the president. Lawyers may duel over what seems like an inelegant draftsmanship in that provision.
As a law student in Nigeria, I was tutored that “shall”, in the scheme of statutory interpretation, connotes a command, a mandate. I have since, however, learned that “shall” could, depending on the context, connote a discretionary term, and even once in a while, connote a future event. There is a quick test to determine whether “shall” has been used as a term of mandate: can you replace the word “shall” with “has a duty to”? If you cannot, then, “shall” is not a term of mandate, but a permissive term.
Now, let’s try that test with section 147(1); let’s substitute “shall” with “has a duty to” in section 147(1). We can’t even do that with section 147(1)! We can’t do that because that section does not create a specific duty on a specific individual. At worst, that section is very tentative in its intentions; at best, it leaves the establishment of offices of Ministers of the Government to the President. The word “may” in relation to the president’s authority to establish offices of Ministers of Government of the Federation is not ambiguous by any stretch. The president may choose to establish offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation. He also may choose not to – without violating the letters and spirit of section 147(1).
So, having cleared the constitutional hurdle, why do we need ministers? Why do we need another layer of governmental bureaucracy, which not only adds to the cost of government, but also does it in a most bizarrely corrupt way? Why do we need corrupt ministers when the country can be more morally and cost-effectively run with career civil service permanent secretaries? Why? Why are my friends criticizing Buhari for taking his time to do what he does not even need to do? Look, Buhari has promised a smarter government. A smarter government means a smaller and leaner, yet effective government. Plugging up ministerial conduits through which insane tons of our national and commonwealth have been systematically siphoned over the years is an experiment worth having. That the country has neither imploded nor exploded for the three weeks that it has been run ‘ministerslessly’ suggests to me that ministers are just needless appendages. They are excess luggage on our national flight, not just weighing down our progress, but bleeding us of fuel through monumental corruption.
Rather than clamour for new ministers, Nigerians will utilize their time and energy more productively in calling for the probe of past ones. This impunity must stop at some point! This just might be our best opportunity to get it right. Let’s not bungle the opportunity of this golden moment. Buhari will appoint ministers at some point. That I know. But if I had my way with him, I would advise him not to. Let him work with career civil servants to run the ministries. Let permanent secretaries assume the ultimate responsibility for their ministries.
If offices of ministers are tools of identity for the ruling party, it makes all the sense at this time to not deploy that tool, seeing as the ruling party has an amorphous identity. What is the ruling party in Nigeria today, the APC? I doubt it strongly. If the APC, occupying the Aso Rock Villa, and with a clear majority in the Legislature, could not produce its desired candidates as principal officers of the National Assembly, how could ministers confer on it any identity?
With Ike Ekweremadu and a handful of his PDP co-travellers able to crash the APC Congressional shindig, what guarantee does the APC have that it could get its candidates confirmed by the Saraki-Ekweremadu Senate? Will Ekweremadu and the PDP not engage in the same sausage making and horse trading that bought them leadership positions, even as oppositions, in an APC Congress? Will they not insist on shared ministerial slots? How will Nigerians take that next level of hijack? Are we ready for it? Or will it be the last straw that will crash this new republic even before it has levelled off on a safe altitude? Your guess is as good as mine. In the meantime, there shall be…as may be. Just what does that crap even mean?
•Dr. Ozoke wrote from Maryland, USA