Game over for Ministers, as they hand over today

By Damola Emmanuel

The life span of the current Federal Executive Council, FEC, ends effectively today as ministers will hand over to their respective permanent secretaries.

This is in sync with President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive, on Wednesday, May 22, when he ordered the ministers to hand over their portfolios to their Permanent Secretaries.

Buhari gave the directive at the valedictory FEC meeting held on that day, saying that they should submit their hand-over notes to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapha.

But for a few Ministers who left the cabinet, the face of the Federal Executive Council never changed significantly throughout President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term.

Of the 36 ministers constitutionally approved and who worked with the president in his first term, only four left during the period. They are: Dr. Kayode Fayemi, erstwhile Minister of Mines and Steel Development, who left in May 2018 to run for second term as governor of Ekiti State; Mr. Ibrahim Jubril, former Minister of State for Environment, who resigned on December 6, 2018 to become the 13^th Emir of Nasarawa Emirate in Nasarawa State; Mrs. Aisha Jummai Al-Hassan, popularly known as Mama Taraba, who resigned as Minister of Women Affairs on July 27, 2018 months after openly declaring her unalloyed loyalty to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who ran against Buhari in the 2019 presidential poll; and Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, a thorough bred technocrat, who quit at the peak of the controversy that boiled over her NYSC discharge certificate.

During his first term, many Nigerians urged the president to shuffle his team. He never did. He shrugged off all the pressure and strident calls to fire some ministers.

Even now more than ever before, the calls have become more ear-piercing for the president to give his cabinet a total face-lift in order to inject some fillip into the tempo and substance of governance in his second term.

The message seems not lost on President Buhari judging from what he said during Monday’s interview on Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, when he declared: “Those who call me Baba go slow will see whether I am slow or fast.”