After nearly four months of Nigerians anxiously waiting for President Muhamadu Buhari to name his cabinet, it took the 8th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria about three weeks to scrutinise the list of ’36 wisemen’ whom Mr. President finally put forward for the statutory Senate clearance.
Now, the Senate was supposed to size up the ministerial nominees for their content and character commensurate with the high expectations of integrity and probity which President Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, are believed to embody.
With President Buhari anchoring his delay in naming a cabinet on his desire to only put forward Nigerians with excellent professional qualifications and sterling ethical and moral pedigrees, expectations rose to the highest crescendo that the nominees would be of impeccable character and posses tremendous wealth of experience ,but the jury is still out on whether or not, the Presidency kept its promise or the 8th Senate met the high expectation of Nigerians with respect to making the nominees pass the litmus test of integrity and character.
What buttresses the assertion of a hanging jury is that at the end of the screening exercise, nearly half of the 109 senators,comprising of nearly50 opposition PDP, refused to assent to the approval granted one of the ministerial nominees resulting in chaotic final deliberations and a dramatic walk out of senators from the red chambers which was inelegant.
Amongst many other causes of the rumpus, by far the most significant and lightening rod for the firestorm in the senate is the approval given the immediate past rivers state governor and Buhari’s presidential campaign organisation’s director general, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, who is also a former Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly and veteran of many political battles.
PDP senators stiff opposition to approval of Amaechi as minister is borne out of the belief that the former governor betrayed his former PDP colleagues by jumping ship to APC and thus triggered the eventual demise of the erstwhile ruling party.
This is more so as the aggrieved senators further allege that it’s Amaechi’s influence , in large part, that enabled President Buhari to garner enough votes from the South-South zone to achieve the national spread of votes earned as stipulated in the constitution to clinch the presidency.
In a highly polarised society like Nigeria where ethnic and religious fault lines have continuously defined political outcomes and sometimes leading to political chasm, Amaechi’s perceived intransigence was unprecedented.
As a counter argument , Amaechi has attributed his leaving PDP for the new APC to lack of internal democracy in his old party which tried unsuccessfully to unseat him as chairman of the very powerful Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, owing to his outspokenness against the perfidy that was allegedly being perpetrated by PDP leadership and government at that time.
In fact , Amaechi sympathisers even stretch the argument further by pointing out that, had he not been politically dexterous, the misfortune that befell Timipreye Silva, the former governor of Bayelsa State, whom the PDP leadership foreclosed his second term bid four years ago by arbitrarily disqualifying him from contesting, (ostensibly for disloyalty to President Jonathan and his family ) would have befallen Amaechi too.
Ironically ,the same force (betrayal) propelling PDP senators vociferous denouncement of Amaechi’s nomination as minister is the counterforce (loyalty) galvanising APC senators that rallied behind him. Bottom line is that PDP wanted to extract a pound of flesh from Amaechi, the‘efante terribe’of Nigerian politics, but failed and the APC-as the party with majority in the senate-had its way. That is the beauty of democracy and in consonance with the popular political dictum and one of the cardinal strengths of democracy ‘Minority will have their say, while majority will have their way’.
In the light of the foregoing, who is right or wrong between PDP, now in opposition and Rotimi Amaechi, their nemesis, (without whom PDP might have still been the ruling party) is now irrelevant, but what’s worrying is that the 8th senate seem to be gravitating from one turbulent experience to another as it is about to get mired in another crisis, as a fall out of the screening exercise, which has gotten PDP senators miffed.
Evidently, the bi-partisan coalition amongst senators that served as bulwark for the emergence of senator, Bukola Saraki, as the president of the 8th senate is now under threat. The walkout by PDP senators from the chambers, in protest against APC insistence on clearing Rotimi Amaechi, reminded me of the walkout staged by PDP stalwarts led by former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, from the Eagle Square venue of a PDP convention last year in protest against former President Jonathan’s sudden changes in the leadership architecture of the party.
Sadly, in addition to the damage done by the schism in the Nigeria Governors Forum, NGF, the Atiku Abubakar led Eagle Square walkout, served as thenunc dimitiesfor PDP.
On a lighter note, my belated advise to PDP senators is that , it would have been more elegant if they had turned their chairs and their backs against the senate president in protest while remaining in the chambers as opposed to the walkout which they staged. Although such a move is more mellow, it could have added more panache than the traditional, hackneyed walkout which, l reckon, Nigerians are now weary of witnessing.
It could have also relieved the embattled PDP senators of the hiatus of going to the press to contradict themselves on an issue which they had argued in favour when PDP was the ruling party. Let’s recall that PDP justified the senate approval for Musliu Obanikoro and Jelili Omotola who had judicial enquiry issues hanging on their necks at the time they were seeking and received senate clearance as ministers.
Clearly, PDP senators who were determined to extract their pound of flesh from Amaechi, felt betrayed by senate president, Bukola Saraki, who they are alleging, tricked them into accepting to allow Amaechi present him self to the senators in the chambers without questions from PDP senators but with a promise that the panel report of the petition against him would be debated in plenary at a later date before granting or denying him approval.
However, lumping Amaechi’s approval with the other 17 nominees on the final day without thoroughly debating the content of the Sam Anyanwu-led ethics committee investigation , must have been like a kick in the groin that riled PDP senators to the extent of staging the walkout to register their protest while levying allegation of compromise and betrayal of trust against the senate president, Saraki . Against the backdrop of recent Court of Appeal ruling turning down the senate president’s request to halt his trial by Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, the possible ramifications of his losing PDP senators support is grave and ominous so the embattled senate president must go back to the drawing board to rebuild confidence amongst PDP senators by reassuring them of his ability and commitment to protect their interest.
As the saying ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’ portrays, senate president, Bukola Saraki, has once again found himself being drawn into the arena of intensive horse-trading to retain his exalted office .
The above scenario compels the question; is Saraki’s role in superintending over the approval of all the ministerial nominees, including Rotimi Amaechi or indeed the senate’s blanket approval, a trick or treat ?
Some would argue that the approval of all the nominees by the senate was inevitable because it’s APC’s directive, more so as President Buhari had averred in the wake of previous senate upheaval that the party is supreme. Considering how the choice of senate president- Bukola Saraki (product of APC/PDP senators consensus) over Ahmed Lawan (product of party diktat) boiled over in the senate, the most reasonable thing for Saraki to do is to toe the party line to avert another nasty spat with the party but in doing so, a battle line was inadvertently drawn between him and his allies in the opposition, PDP.
So, on the issue of senate endorsement of all ministerial nominees, Saraki was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, therefore in my view, it’s not a trick by the senate president, since head or tail, he was bound to be in political hot water.
Although, Saraki may be innocent of trickery, the APC senators can not be absolved from the allegation of trick by PDP. This is because it turned out that the postponed debate of the Amaechi probe report on a later date was a ruse as the ruling party senators did not eventually allow the report to be fully debated as earlier promised .The subsequent walkout by the opposition PDP senators who withheld their assent and the subsequent senate clearance of Amaechi as a minister of the federal republic without their input was a direct consequence.
With the foregoing perspective , the clearance of the ministerial nominees, particularly in the case of Amaechi, can be said to be a trick but there is a very thin line between what can be described as trick or brinksmanship in politics.
For instance, recall that sometime ago, former governor, now senator, Musa Kwakwanso, nominated former Governor Jonah Jang, now a senator, as the candidate for the chairmanship of Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, just to draw the forces against Amaechi’s candidacy into the arena of voting. To the shock and consternation of his allies, Kwakwanso who nominated Jang to contest against Amaechi had perfected plans with others opposed to PDP leadership to vote for Amaechi as the chairman of NGF.
At the end of the exercise, Amaechi beat Jang by 19 votes to 16. Needless pointing out that the resultant messy battle between two factions of NGF that emerged, became PDP’sAchille’s heels. While such impropriety might have been deemed as trickery by the uninitiated, (since it is at best duplicitous, and at worse, deceitful ) to the politician, it is political sagacity and brinksmanship at its best, hence it was Kwakwanso, the agent provocateur that proudly revealed the high-wire horse trading as ode to his political sagacity.
This is perhaps the reason ordinary folks classify politics as a dirty game.
That leads me to the next question; is the clearance of all the ministers a treat? It may well be!
According to Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics and New York Times, NYT columnist, in an article titled ‘ Policy And Character’ published, Oct 30, the best way to know the character of a man is to take a look at his policy proposal.
Krugman, the modern day Keynesian economics evangelist was referring to the candidates for USA presidential elections next year who have been trying to sell their candidacy through televised debates, but that view also incidentally applies to Nigerian ministerial nominees who profusely professed their policy directions in their presentations to the senate in plenary which is perhaps our version of televised marketing of ministerial nominees.
In their bid to impress the senators and thus secure their endorsement , Nigerians were for three weeks treated , via TV, to lofty policy plans by the nominees.
Apart from a few goofs and gaffs elicited by the inappropriate singing of the national anthem by one or two and a couple of others who were not asked policy questions and instead encouraged to defend allegations of impropriety against them,(Amaechi etal) the over all policy proposals of the nominees were quite impressive. In fact, some members of thecommentariathave referred to a generality of the ministers-in-waiting as intellectuals based on the erudite and effusive manner in which they made their policy postulations.
To that extent, l would argue that the ministerial clearance by the senate was a sort of INVITATION TO TREAT. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is simply a legal parlance which is an expression of willingness to negotiate by a seller to a willing buyer. However, it is not a binding offer, as the person making the offer does not intend to be bound as soon as it is accepted.
In the light of the foregoing, the policy proposals made by the ministerial nominees to Nigerians via their presentations to the senate are not binding offer of contract with Nigerians.
To convert their presentation to contract with Nigerians, it is my considered opinion that it is in the best interest of the senate, the presidency ,civil society and indeed Nigerians to hold the ministers-designate accountable for the lofty policies that they enunciated in marketing their suitability for the exalted office of minister of the federal republic.
To this end and since all the submissions were recorded, government should package the presentations into action-plans and make the ministers sign-off on the documents as their contract with Nigeria.
Furthermore, the senate, presidency and civil society as well as any interested Nigerian should be availed of the video footages so that interested Nigerians can monitor ministers performance in office using their postulations in the video as benchmark .
On the part of government, the contents of the video should serve as the template for future assessment of the ministers half way through their tenure or as the authorities deem fit including the civil society who must hold the ministers to account based on their proposition in the senate chamber in the full glare of Nigerians without duress.
If the proposal to hold ministers accountable on the basis of their policy postulations in the senate chambers is adopted, it would be a practical demonstration of open society and open government as never seen before any where in Africa, as we would have turned the apparent crisis in the political parties which played out in the hallowed chambers of the senate, into promotion of Nigeria as a bastion of open government and public sector governance.
In the final analysis, while the aggrieved may argue that that the senate ministerial clearance exercise was a trick because they felt let down by the leadership of a coalition that they trusted to protect their interests, others would contend that it was an invitation to a treat because it offered a window of opportunity for nominees to offer their policy initiatives to Nigerians, which if adopted, could become the fulcrum of ministers contract with Nigeria with which they can be judged.
After all said and done, the ultimate objective of all Nigerians, irrespective of their political affiliations, is to have committed, driven and result oriented ministers as the drivers of their affairs. Such expectations don’t appear utopian in my considered opinion.
***Magnus Onyibe, a development strategist, futurologist and former commissioner in Delta State Government and an alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Massachusetts, USA , sent this piece from Agbor, Delta State.
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