What Is Wrong With Our Trump?, By Jaafar JaafarPremium Times November 17, 2016 What Is Wrong With Our Trump?, By Jaafar Jaafar2016-11-17T10:50:18+00:00 Opinion Comment
buhari


It may be too late for the president to redeem his political image, but it is not too late to fill these important voids for the nation to move forward.

Less than a week after his victory, the newly elected American president, Donald J. Trump, as bad as he is, assembled his transition team. Still less than a week after the victory, Trump appointed Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus, as the chief of staff for the new administration. In the same day, Trump appointed the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon, as chief strategist and senior counselor.

Forget the nepotistic and racist themes that the new Trump team paint, the point at stake is the timeliness of the appointments and understanding of the basic credo that power abhors a vacuum.

If Trump, of all people, knows when to make key appointments, why shouldn’t our ‘all-credible’ President Muhammadu Buhari know? Why make procrastination, trial and error and indecision become the hallmark of the Buhari administration?

On June 3, 2015, barely five days after inauguration, President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to appoint 15 advisers was approved by the Senate. The Senate, thinking the president would hit the ground running, approved the request within 48 hours. But the president pocketed the approval, appointing not more than six advisers intermittently in nearly two years. It still beats me why it took our own ‘Trump’ three months, plus a two-month transition period to boot, to appoint his chief of staff and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). While the president ran the nation without a cabinet, civil servants had a field day, files clogged up, agencies were left at crossroads, the naira fell, the fuel crisis started, and before you say ‘Jack Robinson’, we were in recession.

It is baffling that President Buhari’s office is still running without a private secretary. This is a close aide who coordinates the president’s correspondences, receives phone calls on his behalf, drafts letters, paginates memos, assembles briefs, binds council extracts, crosschecks and documents approvals, works with the State House Chief of Protocol to manage the president’s schedule, etc. No wonder we see many errors in the letters the president personally signs, delays in replying correspondence and some glitches and u-turns in a number of government decisions.

President Buhari’s economic adviser is still as unclear as his economic policy. A few months ago, a statement from the presidency said Dr. Adeyemi Dipeolu is the President’s economic adviser but would be domiciled in the office of the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, who the presidency described as the “principal economy architect”. The president’s ears needed no “economic noise”. No wonder the economy is “shaking and blinking” with a lawyer as “principal economy architect”.

A former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, once said of his former principal: “Obasanjo was his own coordinating minister of the economy and chairman of the economic management team — which he chaired for 90 minutes every week. I met with him daily. In other words, he did not outsource economic management.”

No wonder Obasanjo left about $60 billion in foreign reserves after negotiating a debt cancellation with $12billion. It is dismaying that this government is enslaving our future with a proposed whopping $30 billion debt.

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The president is yet to select any competent Nigerian to be his speechwriter. I’m not surprised his speeches are infested with hanging sentences, solecism and — shamefully — plagiarism.

It appears our president is awaiting the appearance of eschatological Mahdi to appoint a minister from Kogi State to fill the void created by James Ocholi’s death in March. The president, so far, spent eight months thinking about replacing ONE minister. Will somebody tell Buhari it is a constitutional requirement that each state must have a minister?

The political adviser to the president is also a key to democratic government. The political adviser, being a cabinet position, attends Federal Executive Council meetings, and gives perspectives on political issues deliberated during the meeting. Adverse effects of the absence of this key adviser are clear.

The party is at war with itself. The Executive is at war with the Legislature; the national chairman of the party, John Odigie-Oyegun, is at war with the national leader of the party; El-rufai is sparring with Atiku; Ganduje is fighting with Kwankwaso; Bindow is brawling with Nyako and; the party leaders are disgruntled. Nobody seems to advise the president on how to keep his house (party) in order.

Critical bodies like CBN, BOI, NERC, among other,s still work without Boards. Even the Boards of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), approved in August, have not been inaugurated till date. It should be noted that heads of agencies with statutory boards have certain limitations without a constituted Board, and absence of Boards breeds abuse of power.

It may be too late for the president to redeem his political image, but it is not too late to fill these important voids for the nation to move forward.

Jaafar Jaafar, a public affairs analyst and media practitioner, writes from Abuja.
http://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2016/11/17/175834