in defense of yarardua's ministers

I must admit that just like most Nigerians, I am expectant that very soon the president will send some of his ministers and head of ministerial departments back into the private sector from whence they were largely sourced.

But unlike the lackluster performance basis for which some of us want them out, I am for it signification of “work has finally begun” and the opportunity for Mr. President to finally have a complete say in his choice of ministers. My deviation flows from my understanding of what the ministers are essentially expected to do as the supervising head of their respective ministries.

In relation to the government’s budget which one of my lecturers used to define as a nairanized plan of action which for the government however, he would assert, becomes not just a plan but a law once legislative approval is attached.

The process of budget preparation and passage is on it own, a study. It involves not just the entire divisions and subdivisions of the executive arm but also the legislators, political parties and the general public. Therefore, any accusation of a so called failure or non-performance and consequently, sack must apply to every Nigerian who saw the document, made input and finally Okayed it provided, all the programs embedded in it received cash-backings in the course of implementation; and considering the rule of law posturing of the Yaradua led administration, a faithful implementation of the budget can be taken for granted unless he wants the rest of us to believe that his government is just an “old wine in new bottle”

If the budget is good on paper then it must also be good on implementation. We can not claim to know better than one of the authentic leader of a people in modern Nigeria with mass appeal, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who asserted that anything that is good in theory must be good in practice unless, there is a variance between both.

Apart from budgetary matters, by far the most important is policy formulation and implementation and unless we asking for a global application of the current exercise of some ministries of reversing both the laudable and not so laudable policies of the last administration in the name of action or courting controversies, then we must admit that policy formulation is not a cut and join affair. It demands time, resources and endurance. It involves a lot of cross studies of similar policies elsewhere and it effect with a view to avoiding the identified pitfalls.

This is even discounting with the fact that they will have to determine which task or program is to be privatized, commercialized, and outsourced under private public partnership and other such programs that are yet to be baptized.

And for a government that is obviously not impressed with the policies of the last administration and determined to have it removed from the root, it is going to take a little while for it to come out with it own branded policy unlike the situation in Lagos where the government policy is a continuation of Tinubu’s.

On a personal level, the ministers are mostly men and women of no mean achievement who have distinguished themselves in the private sector. In the public sector, they are referred to as technocrats. A look at their curriculum vitae will reveal the stuffs they are made of. For sampling, take the Transport minister, before her appointment, she was a director with the oil giant, Shell.

The government requires time to dig out the root causes of the failure of the last administration in program implementation even with the matchless amount of fund that was available to it. It needs time to know who the good guys and bad guys are among those currently walking the corridors of power otherwise; we might discover after another eight years or more depending on the dispositions of the Supreme Court that we have been on a merry go round.

Ilobi Austin. ilobidominic@gmail.com is an event analyst and resides in Warri.