PERSPECTIVES ON JONATHAN’S CABINET RESHUFFLE AYO OLUKOTUN Contentions, apprehensions and numerous theories have expectedly trailed last week’s sack of 9 ministers from Jonathan’s cabinet, not least because it occurred in the increasingly divided house which the PDP, which produced virtually all the ministers has become. In spite of a much publicized burying of hatchets, the two major sides have continued to flex their muscles, and offer different versions of what actually took place. As this column is being finalized, the spectre of the National Assembly becoming a fresh theatre of intense jockeying and conflict between the old and the new PDP was raised. Straightforwardly, several analysts interpreted the reshuffle as the president camp’s version of the night of the long knives in which anyone directly or remotely connected with the ‘rebellion’ within the party was axed, in a dramatic exemplification of guilt by association. In this construction, former Minister of Education Prof. Ruqayyat Rufai’s sack had nothing to do with the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which government had chosen to sidestep anyway, but with the fact of her nomination by Alhaji Sule Lamido, a hegemon in the new PDP. By the same token Anna Pepple, Minister of Lands was a predictable casualty, having been nominated by the ‘enfant terrible’ of the opposition, Governor Rotimi Amaechi; while Gbenga Ashiru, a career diplomat with a long track record bore the brunt of nomination by former President, Olusegun Obasanjo. Mrs. Olusola Obada’s perceived closeness to her former boss, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, it is believed, proved her undoing. Those scheming to replace the sacked ministers should take into account the prevailing atmosphere within the administration as narrated by The Punch on Monday; quoting a presidency source: “The ministers were nailed by security reports. Their telephone lines were bugged and they were being monitored for at least four months. It was discovered that they were no longer sincere with Mr. President especially since the internal crises in PDP erupted”. As such things go, even a casual conversation with someone on the administration’s blacklist can spell trouble for a minister; the only safe recourse is apparently to limit one’s telephone calls to Mr. Nyesom Wike, the new kid on the block and currently supervising Minister for Education or to Mr. Labaran Maku, the Information Minister who swears constantly by Jonathan and the transformation agenda. To understand the cabinet reshuffle therefore, we must fully insert it into the schism within the ruling party and the politics of reprisals whose unfolding it is difficult to predict at this point. In contrast to the foregoing viewpoint, however, Information Minister; Labaran Maku maintains that the changes were made to “enhance” service delivery and in the interest of “systematic public administration” (what does this mean?). Argued Maku with characteristics stridency, “What I see the President doing is to refocus his government to inject in fresh blood, to achieve greater service delivery to the people of Nigeria. That is the only reason for it; any other thing has nothing to do with the decision of the President”. In Maku’s days as a senior journalist at the Champion newspaper, and in deference to the journalistic canon to examine all the sides he would not only have been less categorical but would have even handedly weighed argument on both sides of the coin before reaching a conclusion. But those were long gone days; what matters now is the transformation agenda however it is defined and intellectual energy must be fully concentrated on advertising or propagating it. Balance is a luxury that those left behind in the newsrooms can afford. We can further interrogate the reshuffle by asking what policy purpose is served by it or how precisely it advances the administration’s capacity to implement its governance goals. Here we take a cue from former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair who argues that “you should always promote or demote for a purpose and not for effect”. True, Jonathan has the prerogative to shuffle the cards and to determine those that best promote his policy objectives. It would have been helpful however, if the public were intimated one way or another of the broader policy objectives if any, driving the changes. For example, no evidence has been adduced so far that the affected ministers were those who performed most poorly in what is generally perceived as an underachieving cabinet. Neither are we informed that the axed ministers were the most profligate, ostentatious or corrupt. Were the reshuffle based on those kind of criteria, many more ministers would have had to go and this would truly have been an attempt to rejuvenate governance by remoulding the cabinet. Information that the exercise is ongoing appears to be an afterthought for it serves no purpose to conduct a reshuffle piecemeal given the policy instability which may be engendered. Even if that is the case, we will still have needed to be enlightened on the central strategy and the wider policy pay-offs informing the reshuffle. It must be factored too that no minister can run faster than the helmsman which is the president without running out of step. This presupposes that performance of individual ministers must be related to Jonathan’s own pace and whether there exists or not a performance culture against which ministers have been accessed. In this respect, it is difficult to rate the current administration no matter what it says to the contrary as high on performance indices or on a sense of purpose or as one in a productive hurry to transform Nigeria. What we see however is that politics and loyalty to the president have been prioritized in rather narrow terms with governance as this columnist have repeatedly argued relegated to the background. Part of the problem is the ideological vacuum in our politics with no substantial policy differences among politicians in or outside of the cabinet. Policy slogans are of course adopted but they mean very little as one hardly encounters policy debates among those in government or those seeking to replace them. This kind of blandness and regrettable neutrality on what matters most increase the politics of spoil sharing based on geography as well as that of total obedience to the leader. To give a simple illustration, if we all agree that the transformation agenda of the administration is the framework for reforming Nigeria, what are the strategies and modalities for implementing it? What will a transformed Nigeria look like, for example, in terms of social equality; more like the Scandinavian countries? Or more like capitalist America featuring pronounced inequality among classes? Obviously, these choices when they are made have policy implications and it would have been healthy to have politicians proffer alternative visions and modalities rather than the current umbrella of surrogate IMF and World Bank policies indifferently implemented. In sum, the reshuffle offers us more of the same that we have seen before and says nothing about how the lot of Nigeria citizens will be improved in the foreseeable future. The victors may call a rally and sound trumpets to celebrate their political triumph but not many Nigerians will be dancing. Olukotun is Professor of Political Science and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies, Lead City University, Ibadan
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:36:21 +0000
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