MINISTERIAL LIST: “FIRST BATCH DEMONS”, “SECOND BATCH ANGELS”?
By constitutional fiats and conventional provisions, President Muhammadu Buhari was supposed to have constituted his ministerial cabinet in his embryonic weeks in office which he refused on some threadbare and flimsy grounds in a shameful display of supercilious totalitarianism and consternating tardiness, he kept Nigerians waiting for four months went ahead to label his would be “Advisers” policy formulators “noise makers”. Eventually, the list was announced (not drafted, because it’s obvious he had the names in mind long ago). Alas! It turned out to be an agglomeration of tendentious, recycled and corrupt political shenanigans.
Tendentious
I would try to give an analysis of three among the 21 nominees.
Going through the list, a name whose personality comes into reckoning is that of Alhaji Lai Mohammed, National Publicity Secretary (or should I call him National Invective Secretary) of the APC. In a clime where ministers are required to be conservative, laconic and sedulous. I find it a conundrum as to why President Muhammadu Buhari opted for a loquacious, pugnacious and vituperative minister- subject-to- screening in Lai Mohammed. A ministerial portfolio is not meant for the prevalent accusation and counter-accusation Brouhaha between the APC and PDP, or between APC and other parties, or was this appointment to vindicate his labeling of ministers as “Noisemakers” ‘Repentant defectors.’
Aisha Jummai Al-Hassan, a former Senator representing Taraba North Constituency, Taraba State under the platform of the PDP was among the three women the ministerial list that diaphanously shows President Muhammadu Buhari’s disdain for women. If this appointment smirks of a self indictment in Buhari’s anti-graft ‘Blitzkrieg’ if Buhari could appoint a former stalwart of a party (PDP) labeled as “corrupt” by the APC into a cabinet designed to curb the menace of corruption, how then can Buhari’s government vindicate its probity? “Corruption” cannot fight corruption, only incorruption can.
Perhaps more ludicrous is the case of Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, a paragon of political crinkum crankum and cross carpeting. Amaechi, was a member of the defunct National Republican convention between 1992-1994, crisscrossed to the Democratic Party of Nigeria (1996), leap frogged to the PDP and now APC. Amaechi’s antecedent of inconsistency and cross-carpeting is a proof that he is only ‘flying’ around to “Feather his own nests”. This type of character does not worth being a minister; he is condemned to loot funds under his watch. Do I need to state that Amaechi is currently under a corruption probe?
President Muhammadu Buhari obviously has appointed ‘demons’ to the disillusionment of the masses. He has shown us that his excuse that he was in search of ‘Angels’ to annex the ministerial portfolios was just a political casuistry and jiggery pokery. Perhaps, the president believes he has appointed his “angels” in his recently released “supplementary list”. But let someone remind the president that a concatenation of ‘angels’ and ‘demons’ would always result in a battle for supremacy and an ultimate contretemps.
written by Bamigboye Judah
cc: omenka, dearpreye, morndew,phockphockman, aminat, winetapper cc: lalasticlala