Written by Reuben Abati
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet choices, as represented by the 33 names that he has already sent to the Senate for screening and confirmation sends a clear message about his own politics and ambitions: the Ministerial list has nothing to do with public interest or the delivery of democracy dividends in the remaining 13 months; it is all about Jonathan’s attempt to consolidate his hold on power, here is a man who is ambitious for power and wants to survive politically by all means.
Before eight additional names were added to the initial 25 that were forwarded to the Senate, it looked as if Jonathan wanted to bring a few professionals on board in addition to his own loyalists. But by the time the number of nominees increased to 33, a much clearer picture had emerged: divided in terms of the background of the nominees, there are far more politicians on the list of 33 than professionals or technocrats. In real terms what are we dealing with? Given the choices that he has made, it is unmistakable that President Goodluck Jonathan is effectively distancing himself from his boss and trying to take charge of power. His advisers seem to be telling him that the best option is to launch a Jonathan Presidency. Somewhere in the corridors of power, a decision has been taken that the Yar’Adua presidency is effectively over. But was this not what the people wanted when we all demanded Yar’Adua’s resignation and called on Jonathan to be his own man?
There is however now another Yar’Adua: one Murtala Yar’Adua, a son of the late General Shehu Yar’Adua, former Chief of Army Staff (1976-79), and founder of the PDM political movement, whose political goodwill was one of the factors that brought Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to power in 2007. Murtala Yar’Adua’s nomination is not fortuitous; he is the product of sheer political expediency and an acknowledgment on the part of President Jonathan of the need not to alienate the Yar’Adua clan even while taking over power from his boss. But there are implications. For the Yar’Adua family, a difficult question may have been raised: who is better entitled to the Shehu legacy: his son or his brother? But for the rest of us, we should be concerned about the turning of the power corridor into a space for the creation of dynasties by those who are pursuing expedient political objectives. Must the Yar’Aduas be in power by this means or the other? I sympathise with Murtala Yar’Adua: no matter how competent he may be, the popular perception is that he is being made a Minister because he is a useful pawn in a grand power game.
There is also a Josephine Anenih on the list. She is a women’s leader of the ruling PDP and wife (some say former wife, but she still bears his name) of the PDP strongman, Chief Anthony Anenih. She may deserve high office in her own right, and it may well be true as is being peddled around that she and her spouse are estranged, but the truth is that by her appointment, the Anenih brand and identity have been brought again to public consciousness. The cleverness behind this should also not be discountenanced: Chief Anthony Anenih gets his name back into reckoning at a time when he seems to be losing out heavily in Edo state, his constituency. Nine Ministers have been retained from the old Yar’Adua team but these are the nine Ministers who did not show any open fanaticism about either Turai Yar’Adua or her husband in the course of the politics of the latter’s ill-health. All the die-hard Yar’Adua loyalists have been dumped. Dora Akunyili has been rewarded for her courage and loyalty. Senator Bala Mohammed who called for an investigation of President Yar’Adua’s health status on the floor of the Senate is on the list.
What seems important as the overriding values in these appointments is loyalty and support. Acting President Jonathan has offered us a smart balancing act, a cabinet of compromises that helps him to build a power base of his own; every cabinet in Nigeria is about compromises - afterall the Constitution insists on the reflection of Federal Character in the composition of such bodies, but in the present instance, the compromise is more obvious than the goals, and it is a compromise of survival not Federal Character or service delivery. What is President Jonathan’s own grand plan – beyond his so-called four-point agenda -and how does he hope to address all the urgent social and infrastructural issues that confront the country? This much is not clear from his cabinet choices.
The emphasis on survival should be underscored. On many occasions in the past, it had been the tradition that state Governors had a strong input into the appointment of Federal Ministers and ambassadors especially where the same political party is in power at both the state and the Federal level. Appointments at the centre were part of a network of political patronage up to the grassroots level, to make governance representative and to create spheres of influence for the Presidency in the states. It is doubtful if the PDP Governors made any strong input into the Jonathan list of Ministers in spite of Governor Namadi Sambo’s claim to the contrary. It will be recalled that it was these same Governors who took the decision recently that the Presidential slot for 2011 will remain in the North, thus ruling out the possibility of Goodluck Jonathan hoping to succeed his boss by exploiting the power of incumbency. By ignoring the Governors (most if not all of them) in compiling his list of Ministers, Jonathan is boldly reminding them of the power and influence of his office. In this regard, Jonathan’s cabinet choices are in part about 2011 and intra-PDP politics.
The two nominees from Ogun state, former President Obasanjo’s home state, certainly could not have come from Governor Gbenga Daniel. Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye, one of the Ogun nominees, is an arch-rival of Daniel in Ogun politics. Nor are Dora Akunyili and Josephine Anenih, nominees of the Anambra Governor, or Charles Ogiemwonyi a nominee of the Edo Governor, or Yar’Adua of the Katsina Governor or Bala Mohammed, a nominee of the Bauchi governor who happens to be President Yar’Adua’s son-in-law, and so on. It is not impossible that by now, the state Governors who trooped to Abuja with their recommendations and who were tactfully snubbed will be busy analysing the implications of the Jonathan list. Hitherto, Governors as party leaders in the states saw and treated Ministers and lawmakers in Abuja as their own ambassadors at the centre. Jonathan’s attempt to checkmate the Governors and the Yar’Adua group is however a double-edged sword that could result in vicious intra-party wrangling and this in the long run, may not be in President Jonathan’s interest.
The real question about the Governors and the counter-balance effect of Ministers can only be best understood in terms of who controls the delegates for the 2011 election caucuses. It is also instructive that a group of Katsina lawmakers this week tried to create a scene at the House of Representatives when they sought to move a motion of urgent national importance with claims that President Umaru Yar’Adua is being marginalised and victimized and that there are plans to withdraw his security aides. President Jonathan may have unwittingly set the stage for the distractions that could further hobble his efforts.
Two future developments may well further indicate the thinking of the Jonathan Presidency: what the new cabinet when properly constituted does about the Yar’Adua Presidency and what President Jonathan does with the post of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which will become vacant, with the expiration of Professor Maurice Iwu’s tenure in June, regardless of the silly campaign by a few misguided elements that Iwu’s tenure should be extended. Will the new cabinet take the decision to declare President Yar’Adua incapacitated, a step that the Yar’Adua cabinet could not take and which civil society expects? And whoever Jonathan appoints as INEC chairman, will he not feel obliged to do Jonathan’s bidding in the 2011 elections since the National Assembly has refused to accept the Uwais panel’s recommendation that the position should be fully independent? There are many grey areas in need of further deconstruction.
Worth noting is the fact that Dr Jonathan had to visit the Senate President at home before the list of Ministers was forwarded to the Upper House. The Senate has promised a proper screening of the Ministers which is unlikely to happen. More so as the intended portfolios for each nominee were not indicated. In previous exercises, there had always been a strong demand from civil society that the portfolios of intending Ministers should be disclosed to allow public participation in the screening to provide the Senate an opportunity to ask task-specific and knowledge-based questions and to prevent the usual comical display whereby would-be Ministers are asked either irrelevant or stupid questions.
By submitting his list of Ministers in a business-as-usual fashion, Dr Jonathan is not interested in any rigour. By accepting the list, instead of sending it back for the inclusion of intended portfolios, the Senate is also equally complicit in denying Nigerians the benefit of a proper screening. The Jonathan Presidency is faced with three main transitions: a Presidential transition, an electoral transition, and a policy transition: reducing all three to the politics of expediency is bound to further foul up the political space. The argument that a near end of term cabinet that is likely to become lame-duck in a matter of months is not meant to deliver any service is an abuse of privilege, and we can only hope that this is not the sub-text for the absence of rigour.
The present situation is unfortunate considering the fact that the dissolution of the Yar’Adua cabinet was a popular move. Nigerians were fed up with that morally conflicted cabinet which, when confronted with the truth about Yar’Adua’s ill-health, failed to act honourably. Its dismissal could have given Dr. Jonathan a good opportunity to make a strong statement about change, solidarity and progress at once. But he failed to act decisively ab initio by delaying the announcement of his list of Ministers, even now six states are yet to be represented in the list. No one should be optimistic that the Jonathan cabinet will make any difference in the social and development issues that affect the people in the remaining 13 months before the next change of government, compromised as it is by the politics of its composition and Jonathan’s own ambitions. In the long run, replacing a Yar’Adua cabal with a Jonathan cabal (comprising mainly influential retired Generals) serves the same narrow interests that have held Nigeria down since independence, and can only trigger a deadly struggle for power and control. The season of the people’s liberation appears to have once again been postponed.
Source: Nigerian Guardian Newspaper
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