President of Nigeria Buhari
ONUMBA.COM, USA – Why the heck is everybody in Nigeria harping on President Buhari’s cabinet as though their next lunch depends on it?
Shouldn’t we all be worried more about whether or not Buhari picks the right folks for cabinet jobs?
I just don’t get it.
Cabinet, cabinet, cabinet. Everybody is yackry-yacking about cabinet.
That’s all you hear now. Not surprisingly, a cavalcade of the president’s apostolic foes are out there in full force caviling from the rooftop over his slow-poke approach to forming a cabinet, pointing to it and saying aha, you see, Buhari is intensely flummoxed and does not know his way forward.
Ain’t that a bunch of crap? That hollow broadside, to put it leniently, is a pearl of vapid nonsense, nothing but a raging claptrap being spewed by a brigade of flaming idiots with rabid disdain for Nigeria’s progress. These are disgruntled clods, dunderheads and charlatans who would rather have Nigeria remain mud-stuck in apocalyptic squalor while a few fat cats have their way with the country’s till.
The truth is, Buhari’s election as president on May 29, which many people did not see coming, threw a fairly big wrench to completely wreck their plans. Loved it.
Look, this president is a different kind of president. Consequently, he is going about things a bit differently, sometimes a lot differently. No more ‘business as usual’ should not be a fancy cliché. Now, should it? Buhari is implementing that. It is absolutely imperative that Nigerians, some of them clueless naifs, get that, perhaps more importantly, get used to that, actually, the earlier the better. Heck, it is for their own good, for crying out loud.
The Nigeria Buhari inherited was a profound mess limping along to nowhere in a moribund condition led by a completely clueless and incompetent former President Goodluck Jonathan. Things were ferociously and depressingly bad. Nigerians should be thankfully cartwheeling that they now have a meticulous president, a thoughtful leader, a focused man who is stubbornly honest, and who is determined to install a scrum-like approach to governance aimed at tackling the heap of challenges he inherited from his totally feckless predecessors.
It’s no epiphany that one of the most anticipated acts of a new president, any new president in any country, is the formation of his cabinet, with long-throated job seekers swooning, lobbying and clamoring for a spot on it.
It is particularly so for Nigeria where the job of a cabinet minister is vastly viewed as a coveted ticket to the opulent city of Lootingville.
Now, what exactly is a cabinet?
Here’s 101 version of it. It is a gaggle of citizens appointed by the president to head each ministry, to help the president carry out his policies, help him implement his vision for the country and report to the president. Essentially, all heads of ministries are members of the cabinet that collectively form part of the executive branch of government. Sometimes, depending on the country, a selected number of other top functionaries of the executive arm of government that are not necessarily ministry heads also participate as cabinet members.
All of which brings us to this seismic kicker. President Buhari, apparently, not giving a dollop of hoot to what his noisy critics are saying, has decided to delay naming his cabinet until September.
His reason? Oh, he is taking his sweet time to fish out qualified people with no history of corruption.
To which I say a thunderous ‘Amen.’
But of course, Buhari’s goonish critics will be miffed about it, and sure will unleash their truculent onslaught at the president.
The absolute beauty of all this, as noted by one Buhari spokesman, Femi Adesina, is that there’s nothing in the Nigerian constitution mandating a set timeline for the president to form a cabinet.
The president can name his cabinet any time he wants.
Heck – I would rather have a rudderless, minister-less ministry than have one manned by an imbecilic ladrone. It’s akin to giving a rat known for its love of dry fish the job of safeguarding a large duffel bag full of dry fish. That lucky rat might invite his buddies for a shindig with the fish in the bag.
As for how I would describe President Buhari’s management style so far, well, he is a radical mugwump with a no-nonsense swagger operating within the narrow contours of a constitutional framework and broader confines of a democratic structure.
Oh, I love it.
All told, I am hugely agog for Nigeria and for the entire African continent. Buhari, without a doubt, has restored back our (Nigerians abroad) hopes of returning home, someday, now sooner than ever.
Yeah, he is 72 and that’s why I pray that God grant him good health to lead Nigeria for four years and beyond.
