By Julia Payne and Ulf Laessing

ABUJA Feb 25 (Reuters) - Almost a year after winning an election on promises to fix Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari's grand vision of reform is fading, with power centralised in his increasingly remote presidency and the bureaucracy in disarray.

After axing almost 50 top civil servants and 40 ambassadors and shaking up ministries in a bid to excise endemic graft, the 73-year-old former military ruler has even started cancelling some weekly cabinet meetings.

His aides said this was because under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, the meeting had become a forum for ministers to hand out over-priced contracts to friends.

Critics say the effect has been to leave government rudderless while Africa's biggest economy flatlines.

Power is concentrated in Buhari's office, where files pile up on the desk of his chief of staff. Ministers appointed only in November - more than six months after Buhari's victory - are reluctant to make decisions, diplomats say.

Government insiders admit things may be getting worse before they get better, but say that is to be expected given the scale of the task in hand.

"Of course it's chaos. We're rebuilding a whole system. There is no depth in the bureaucracy," said a senior government source who asked not to be named.

Buhari is too often absent to provide enough personal guidance, according to his critics.

Since taking office in May, he has been on 26 overseas trips, visiting Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, where officials say he hopes to drum up interest from investors.

His opponents complain that his external focus comes at the expense of the two pillars of the domestic economy - the oil-producing Niger Delta and Lagos, the sprawling megacity that serves as Nigeria's commercial capital.

He has visited neither as president.


NO BUDGET

Buhari has won plaudits from ordinary Nigerians for fighting graft as part of a crackdown on an elite whose wealth has grown for decades while most of the country's 170 million people remained in poverty.

The army under his command has also reconquered territory from the Boko Haram group in the north, though the jihadists still regularly stage suicide attacks.

But the ascetic general has not yet delivered on a promise to create jobs by ending reliance on oil. His civil service cull has cut avenues for graft but also created knowledge gaps, to the point that the government has so far been unable to produce a viable budget.

Buhari last week fired a senior budget official who had been appointed in August, after he helped to produce a draft which labelled car or computer purchases as capital expenditures, according to Nigerian research group Budgit.

One billion naira - more than $5 million at the official exchange rate - had been budgeted for office furniture alone.

"This was really depressing when we expected that this should be a total shift from the wasteful culture that we had had in the past," said Oluseun Onigbinde, founder of the group.

Buhari fired most of the top management at state oil firm NNPC but his replacements have struggled to get a grip on the massive and opaque entity, officials say. Some projects have been delayed as the newcomers struggle to locate the relevant files in the four NNPC towers.

With no regular meetings, ministers are still trying to figure out what they can achieve, officials say. Buhari merged several ministries but since a cabinet retreat in November, he has left them to drift.

Buhari's aides counter that the cabinet meets whenever there is something to decide, and that the government needs time to work out detailed plans - including funding - for such daunting tasks as road-building or the improvement of Nigeria's notoriously erratic power supply.

But a senior civil servant who asked not to be named said ministers struggled to get the attention of Buhari's office. "There is a proposal, a consultancy does a study but then the report gets ignored," he said.

Buhari asked Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to coordinate economic policy, but diplomats say he is being sidelined as the president personally handles all key issues, including a freeze of the naira exchange rate that is crippling investment.

That leaves businessmen wondering how the West African oil producer can survive its worst economic crisis for decades.

"Policy statements hang but there's no trickle down," said Prince Ike Ubaka, head of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria. (Additional reporting by Chijioke Ohuacha; Editing by Ed Cropley and Andrew Roche)

http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFL8N15W3UQ?sp=true

Buhari is a dullard
APC is a very big scam scam

Nonsense media agency

Keneking:
Nonsense media agency

just like you abi ?

Keneking:
Nonsense media agency

dunno Y Nigerians are soo blinded from the truth...I weep for this country & I weep the more 4 in vain do I weep cos the wheel of dis country is being staired by a Rockie

All you have to do is look at the names of the authors and contributors of the article.

Anti-progressive cultural dance group A.K.A. Wailers doing their normal work

YourMrBoo:
Buhari is a dullard
APC is a very big scam scam

This article needs an intellectual to understand. You are a tape recorder programmed to type those six words.
" the bureaucracy lacks depth". Do you understand what that means?. GEJ stripped the civil service of ability to function as the FG was completely privatised. I know for instance that Okonjo was working with only international consultancy companies throughout -like Mckinsey whilst turning the bureaucracy to mere file pushers. Jonathan's government also stripped the ministries of files and key information. Buhari is actually building a government from the scratch.

Sharplogger:


dunno Y Nigerians are soo blinded from the truth...I weep for this country & I weep the more 4 in vain do I weep cos the wheel of dis country is being staired by a Rockie

Buhari is a rookie. Ha ha ha.
We brought an NDDC officer into Aso Rock , you did not call him a rookie. You are calling a former head of state, minister of petroleum who was building all the infrastructure during the Abacha regime a rookie. What are you smoking?

Let us give our president the benefits of doubt. What I am waiting for is the passage of the budget, before we can conclude.

IPOB Reuters - Omenka

Flexherbal:
Let us give our president the benefits of doubt. What I am waiting for is the passage of the budget, before we can conclude.

Passage of that scam?

CNN can even join BBC to write any article that suits their fantasy, we the patriots care less.

We voted for our President, we trust him and we believe God will guide and help him to make our dear country a better place for patriotic Nigerians.

As for ipods and wailers, keep wailing and gnashing your teeth........ ko kan aye.

ISpiksDaTroof:
[s]All you have to do is look at the names of the authors and contributors of the article.[/s]

what happened to their names ?

evil people from d evil region who are afraid of change

nigerians rejected digital computer n voted an ancient analog computer with daura operating system. starting d system alone takes 7 months to boot, not to talk of using d economic policy software program in d computer dat takes eternity to open.

ubah84:
evil people from d evil region who are afraid of change

pls stop tribalizing my thread

lalasticlala happy sunday.

Adminisher:


This article needs an intellectual to understand. You are a tape recorder programmed to type those six words.
" the bureaucracy lacks depth". Do you understand what that means?. GEJ stripped the civil service of ability to function as the FG was completely privatised. I know for instance that Okonjo was working with only international consultancy companies throughout -like Mckinsey whilst turning the bureaucracy to mere file pushers. Jonathan's government also stripped the ministries of files and key information. Buhari is actually building a government from the scratch.

Nice one, this is how Lie Mohammed started. Kontinu

appini:


Nice one, this is how Lie Mohammed started. Kontinu

you dey mind them?

YourMrBoo:
Buhari is a dullard
APC is a very big scam scam

I wonder y people are not objective enough to face issues instead of d person of PMB.
Nigeria is d issue, not Buhari

There are some truths about the article, the president has to learn how to delegate more often, to me i dont think he needs to personally make all those overseas trips, there are ministers he can delegate it to. There are secession threats in the SE and SS, militancy and pipeline vandalisation in the SS, yet he hasnt visited these areas and he has made 26 whooping trips overseas. Each trip the president makes cost more foreign currency which could be greatly reduced if he had delegated the trip to someone else. The president is doing well in his fight against corruption, albeit one-sided, but corruption isnt the only issue in Nigeria that needs to be addressed. The president needs to focus more of his attention on the domestic issues.

Totalman1:

I wonder y people are not objective enough to face issues instead of d person of PMB.
Nigeria is d issue, not Buhari

Because that thing called buhari is a truck of bad luck affecting anything he touches e.g Nigeria.

ISpiksDaTroof:
All you have to do is look at the names of the authors and contributors of the article.

The names have nothing to do with the message. Learn how to digest the truth

It appears change in this case is a very bad thing

Even if Buhari brings down the country to its knee..... you would still support him....i am typing this with serious heat on me because we have not see light here for over a week.

Just admit....you are so ashamed to axxept that you have made a mistake, hence you now call yourself patriotic nigeria.

superstar1:
CNN can even join BBC to write any article that suits their fantasy, we the patriots care less.

We voted for our President, we trust him and we believe God will guide and help him to make our dear country a better place for patriotic Nigerians.

As for ipods and wailers, keep wailing and gnashing your teeth........ ko kan aye.

Keneking:
Nonsense media agency

I think it's high time Tinubu upgrades this guy's OS from Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) of the 50s to MIT operating system, still of the 50s. This is because this system is malfunctioning a bit, however; any upgrade beyond the 50s OS will make this system crash completely..

Sharplogger:


dunno Y Nigerians are soo blinded from the truth...I weep for this country & I weep the more 4 in vain do I weep cos the wheel of dis country is being staired by a deceptive, corrupt, certigicateless, ethnocentric, religious, bigoted and tyrannic conman who cares less about the common man

Fixed!

OP, go and learn English language; there's nothing "scathing" or "ripping" about this article. It's nothing but usual rants we get from the iPod youths.

See the iPod youth below.

(Additional reporting by Chijioke Ohuacha ; Editing by Ed Cropley and Andrew Roche)

Keneking:
Nonsense media agency

I even heard it's namdi Kane that owns Reuters...Yeye dey smell

Standing5:
Anti-progressive cultural dance group A.K.A. Wailers doing their normal work