Pan-African_Broadcast

The office of the Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria is modelled after the US Chief of Staff in the White House. In Nigeria, the primary responsibilities of the office are managing the flow of information, people and advising the President on various issues concerning the country. The Chief of Staff to the President is the head of all staff working in the Presidency and this extends to all correspondence to the President himself outside the corridor of power. It might interest avid followers of events to note that it was Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who activated the office in the first instance and other successive Presidents have towed this controversial line.

President Buhari has seemingly up this by injecting more fame and influence to the office, such that Nigerians began to come to terms with the power associated with the office. Until his demise in April 2020, Abba Kyari, the erstwhile Chief of Staff held sway as the de facto President who wielded so much influence that he could singlehandedly take decisions. He had the ear of the President and retains the sole capacity to hire and fire. This certainly continues with Professor Gambari, the present Chief of Staff.

In a progressive government, the office ought to accelerate government operational capacity by devolution of hierachial roles. However, the corruption and bureaucracy which is tangential to the Nigerian system has brought the office to disrepute. The office of the Chief of Staff to the President is now a self-styled Machiavellian empire that is probably more powerful than any other in the system. The Nigerian state and its people are the victims of these anomalies which this office created.

One of the most visible retrogression incubated by the Office of the Chief of Staff is stagnation of government operations. President Buhari's emergence was with lots goodwill, and expectations were high. Nigerians have reasons to be optimistic. They wanted a figure with unblemish record to put a round ball in a round peck. He set the ball running but the acceleration with which he wanted to implement his agenda has been scuttled by the office of the Chief of Staff. This is in the form of duplication of responsibilities centred around the office of the Chief of Staff. This chaos has brought about stop-start and eventual stagnation of responsibilities. The policies of the government has suffered and one of the famous goofs was during the heydays of late Abba Kyari when the President dispatched a directive that Service Chiefs should henceforth follow through the office of Chief of Staff as their correspondence to his office. This singular ill-advised decision had negatively affected the operations of the military in various flashpoints of insecurity plaguing the country. Funds, directives and plannings take days or even months before it is given approval by the President. The insecurity worsened and the Service Chiefs bear the brunt of the failures and Nigerians were calling for their heads while been themselves the victims of power play spearheaded by the Office of Chief of Staff.

Perhaps one of the most obvious frailties created by the burdening office of the Chief of Staff is the sky-rocketing cost of governance. This is at the back of dwindling oil revenue and ballooning expenditures. President Buhari has inherited this biting adversity and this has even worsened with COVID-19 pandemic affecting the world economy. The price of crude oil, Nigeria's main income earner, has plummeted. This leaves the President with burgeoning cost of running his expensive government. While many offices would have done a lot good by giving them some degree of autonomy. Their responsibilities are cruelly concentrated on the office of the Chief of Staff. This is expensive and time-wasting. Perhaps if President Buhari were to exploit the 2012 Oronsanye report, things could have been different. The report recommended reduction of the cost of governance, eliminating the duplication of functions in government departments and agencies, and reasonably devolves governmental powers.

Nevertheless, President Buhari had promised to implement some aspect of the report, but power brokers felt threatened and ensured it didn't see the light of day and the President may have succumbed to their antics, but if and when it is implemented, the Office of the Chief of Staff must give way, and chaos associated with government operation might be given a blow.

Moreover, the office of the Chief of Staff is tangential to high-level corruption bedeviling government operations. The cunning monopoly of power by successive Chief of Staff's define the menace of corruption littered within the office. It is thought that corruption had engineered wastage, looting, and ineptitudeness in the Nigerian system. The office of the Chief of Staff is spearheading this inanities.This is associated with the pass which Nigerians rejected by electing President Buhari. He was elected to end the scourge, and it is only through the elimination of corruption in top echelons of government can we reach the promise land. Meanwhile, the President has shown an uncommon weaknesses in allowing the office of Chief of Staff to usurp power and perpetrate corruption. The recent altercation between the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi and the MD of the NPA, Hadiza Bala which led to the suspension of the latter epitomizes all that is wrong with the office of Chief of Staff. The NPA is under the supervisory of the Ministry of Transport but Mrs Hadiza Bala who is at loggerhead with the minister bypasses him in all matters concerning the agency. She is alleged to have refused remitting billions of Naira of revenue due to the Federal Government. Shockingly, her recent re-appointment came through the office of Chief of Staff and not the Minister who is suppose to vet her. This is one of the many abnormalities protruding from an inept institution that centres responsibilities on one office, while denying other units of government their roles.

Therefore the President as a matter of urgency and national importance, needs to proscribe the office of the Chief of Staff. It is only through this that the blushes of this government will be saved. The government emerged on the alter of integrity and due process. Any deviation will give wrong signals to Nigerians and give credence to hopelessness and dejection.