President Muhammadu Buhari took four months to appoint his ministers. The long delay and the mystery surrounding the ministerial selection naturally raised expectations. Surely, if it took the president four months to name his ministers it must be because he was scouting for great and rare talents, people with impeccable character. In his Washington Post article in July, the president gave two reasons for the delay. First, he wanted to “put new rules of conduct and good governance in place”, the absence of which he blamed for much of the official corruption in Nigeria. Then, after creating a new good governance framework, he would appoint “experienced and capable” individuals to run the ministries. These two preconditions further increased expectations and clearly signalled that something significant was about to happen, representing real change; that, for instance, the new ministers would be squeaky clean and possess outstanding talents.
But, alas, in the end, it was a damp squib, an anti-climax. Most of the ministers are run-of-the-mill and many are what you might call the “usual suspects”, the familiar faces! I agree with those who said that virtually all the ministers could have been named, to use the president’s own words in his Washington Post piece, “immediately on my elevation to the presidency”. To be sure, this is essentially a political cabinet, dominated by political acolytes, party apparatchiks and veterans of Nigeria’s party politics. This, of course, runs contrary to the impression the president gave that he was struggling to find suitable ministerial candidates among the political class.
In one interview, President Buhari said he was finding the process of appointing his ministers “very tough”, adding that “This is because what I see daily in terms of the damage inflicted on Nigeria in the last 10 years is enormous”. He also said there were people he had pencilled down as ministerial nominees, but later discovered that “in one way or the other they were dragged to such unwholesome practices”. Given that situation, one would expect the president to look beyond the limited political talent pool for people who hadn’t swum in the “dirty” water of politics. Yet President Buhari chose to have an overtly political cabinet dominated by politicians who have been key players in the politics of the past 10 years!
Now, it may well be that the president’s “new rules of conduct and good governance”, which he presumably put in place before appointing the ministers, helped to safeguard the selection process against the “undesirables” and ensured that all the new ministers passed the integrity test. But, as I have argued previously on these pages, it would be good to see what the new good governance rules look like so that Nigerians can judge for themselves whether the new ministers meet them.
This is important because, in his Chatham House speech before the election, Buhari made a bold promise that “If I am elected president, the corrupt will not be appointed into my administration”. We need to know whether the president has kept this promise. But, going by public opinion, it seems that few Nigerians believe that ALL the ministers are saints. And perception matters a lot in politics. From an integrity point of view, it would help if the new ministers publicly declare their assets, as the president and the vice-president have, to their credit, both done. They should all do so to show they have nothing to hide! Enough said on that. Now, what about the political and technocratic mix of the cabinet?
Almost as soon as Buhari became president, there were calls for him to appoint technocrats into his government. The calls came from home and abroad. For instance, the US Vice President Joe Biden urged President Buhari to appoint “seasoned technocrats” to head key sectors of the economy. Why the fuss about technocrats, you might ask? Well, as I wrote not long ago, despite their mixed record of achievements, technocrats are indispensable to any government. They possess expertise in private information, and the conventional wisdom is that good policy and technocracy go together.
However, the need for technocratic ministers usually depends on the nature of a country’s civil service. In countries that have a permanent civil service, where the civil servants are usually technocratic, there is little emphasis on having technocrats as ministers. But for countries without a permanent and technocratic civil service, it is almost imperative to have technocratic ministers. For instance, the US does not have a permanent civil service, and, as such, US ministers, or secretaries as they are called, usually have to be renowned experts in the work of their departments.
By contrast, in the UK, which has a permanent and technocratic civil service, ministers are seldom appointed to any department because they have expertise in its work. They are there to provide political leadership and give policy direction, while the technocratic civil servants develop and implement the policy of the government. Yet UK governments have often brought in outside experts. Most notably, when Gordon Brown became prime minister in June 2007, he formed what he called “government of all the talents”, which was given the acronym “Goats”. He brought into government non-politicians, such as former deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mark Mallock-Brown, and former director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Digby Jones, among other outside experts. The general view was that they made positive impact on the government’s performance.
For developing countries, the question is as much about international credibility as it is about government performance. Whether or not a developing country has a permanent civil service, having renowned technocrats to head key sectors of the economy, is always crucial for the international credibility of its government. Technocratic ministers are needed to use their professional and technical skills to help deliver an effective government. This is particularly crucial because the civil services in most developing countries, whether or not permanent, lack critical policy-making and delivery capabilities. This capacity deficit is very acute in Nigeria’s permanent civil service, notwithstanding President Buhari’s view that the civil service is technocratic!
But, let’s be clear, no democratic government is ever, or can ever be, dominated by technocrats. As I argued in a recent column, “In democratic politics, you can’t run a country without politicians. You have to work within the constraints imposed by intra-party politics and the need for representativeness and diversity to appoint reasonably talented and competent politicians as ministers, but with a good mix of technocrats”.
So, how did President Buhari ministerial selection fare on these metrics? Well, first, it failed the diversity test, considering the tokenistic presence of women, just 6 out of 36 ministers, in the cabinet and the lack of young people, under the age of 45! Second, apart from few politicians, such as Babatunde Fashola, and Kayode Fayemi, who have acquired some local and international reputation as reformers or effective administrators, most of the politicians in the cabinet are pretty middling in terms of demonstrable talents and competence.
There are two possible explanations for such a lacklustre political cabinet. The first is that the president doesn’t intend to give many of the ministers serious jobs since, as speculated, some of them may be “ministers without portfolio”. The second explanation, albeit cynical, is that the cabinet reflects the president’s view that ministers are there “to make a lot of noise”. Surely, if President Buhari wanted his ministers to bring something tangible to government rather than being there to “make noise”, he would form a government of great talents, of reformists who have brilliant solutions to Nigeria’s huge problems.
This, of course, is not to say that there are no ‘technocrats’ in the cabinet. It would be unfair to those in the cabinet to deny their presence there. There is a chartered accountant, Kemi Adeosun, an investment banker, Okechukwu Enelamah, an oil industry expert, Ibe Kachikwu, and an aviation expert, Hadi Sirika. There are also educationists, namely, Claudius Daramola, Isaac Adewole and Anthony Anwuka, the last two, former vice chancellors. And, of course, there is Amina Mohammed, who advised the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, on sustainable development and played a key role in the development and adoption of the SDGs. Then, there are about eight lawyers in the government, five of them, including the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, Babatunde Fashola and Udo Udoma, SANs. Udoma, of course, also has corporate experience as former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and of UACN.
But it is difficult to tell a coherent story about the government’s priorities, or find its soul, from the small list of technocrats. Certainly, the weakest link in the technocratic mix of the Buhari cabinet is the economic team. I wrote recently that Nigeria needs a strong economic team, arguing that “If the market believes the president is weak on the economy and that he also has a weak economic team, well, that would be damaging to Nigeria’s credibility with the international financial community”.
Nigeria’s economy is comatose, not just because of the oil market crisis but also because it is structurally defective. The president needs to be laser-focused on turning the economy around, and his cabinet should reflect that imperative. That calls for a cabinet with an unmistakable economic focus and a strong economic team consisting of acclaimed economists and other experts. As the Chilean economist, Jose Pinera, who studied many successful economies, put it, a precondition for a successful economy is “the existence in government of a team of economists with a common, coherent view of what needed to be done and commanding the instruments of concentrated executive authority”.
On these two criteria – a coherent view of what needs to be done and executive authority – it is not clear to me that the economic team would pass the test. Take the first criterion. Without taking anything away from the qualifications and experiences of those likely to form the economic team, I have to say that the absence of top applied economists in the team weakens it. Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa and the 26th largest in the world, it certainly needs economic ministers, with a “wow factor”, who have international standing and clout and who, as the respected economist John Williamson put it, are “able to judge which institutions and policies are needed” to create and manage a successful economic system. The skills-set needed to achieve such economic objectives goes well beyond some knowledge or expertise in accountancy or banking. You need top-level skills in normative and applied economics. Given the absence of such skills in the ‘economic’ team, it is doubtful that a coherent view of what must be done to turn around the economy can emerge from it.
Then, consider the second criterion – executive authority. Now, in my view, even if the economic ministers know what to do to achieve a successful economy, they are unlikely to have the necessary executive authority to do it. This is because, having run the country alone for over four months without ministers, President Buhari has formed strong views on the way the country’s economy should be managed. He has, for instance, nailed his colours to the mast on various aspects of economic policy, including devaluation, the removal of the petroleum subsidy, trade and industrial policies, as well as foreign exchange management. Essentially, he seems to have developed settled views on the economy.
Furthermore, the permanent secretaries and the central bank governor, who have worked closely with the president alone over the past four months, are fully au fait with his thinking on the key economic issues and have internalised his policy steers. So, the question is: can the finance and trade ministers change existing policies, assuming they even have a different view on the way forward? Ministers should come to government with policy ideas wanting to influence a positive change. But, on the economy, the president has, over the past four months, set the policy tone and direction. My view is that the new ministers have come late in the game and may only be able to implement rather than shape policy! Only an open and collegiate approach to policy-making by the president can change that.
Let me be clear. President Buhari is a leader of integrity, honest and irreproachable, and means well for Nigeria. But my public-spirited concern is that, on his ministerial selection, high ideals gave way, on the whole, to political pragmatism. The composition of any cabinet must reflect the government’s priorities. And no priority should be higher for the Buhari government than to turn the economy around. Every other thing, including security, depends on it. But, in my view, the president’s cabinet does not reflect this overarching priority. For instance, the cabinet has eight or more lawyers, including five SANs, but has no room for a single top economist. It is also packed with political henchmen with only a smattering of technocrats. It is a missed opportunity!
But, all that said, congratulations are still in order. So, I congratulate the new ministers. The onus is, however, on them to demonstrate that they can make a real difference, and are not in government just to “make noise”, as the president famously said of ministers. I wish them well!
Olu Fasan
