Buhari explains delay in appointment of ministers

The national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Oyegun, yesterday gave an insight into the delay in the appointment of ministers by President Muhammadu Buhari several weeks after his inauguration, denying the speculation that the inordinate ambition of some party leaders may be cause.

Oyegun, who spoke to journalists yesterday at the party’s national secretariat, Abuja, hinted that Buhari’s cabinet members will be made of technocrats.

He appealed to Nigerians to be patient with the president, noting that what is important is not the ministerial list but assembling technocrats and people who have the passion to deliver.

He also denied any rift between President Buhari and the leadership of the party on the subject of the ministerial list.

“There is absolutely no dispute between the party and the president. We agreed that we shall use all manner of people – politicians, technocrats, all manner of people, even if not politicians – who can deliver and who subscribe passionately to the agenda of the president, to move this country forward irrespective of where the people come from, irrespective of whether the person is a card-carrying member of the party. What is important is the qualification of the person and the ability of the person to deliver on the ideas of Mr. President.

“What we are interested is in the ability of the people to bring up the ideas that will help Mr. President achieve the set objectives and the ability to deliver on what the president wants,” he said.

He noted that selecting minister was a duty of the chief executive function and the president had the right to consult as widely as possible.

“This means he might pick people within the party, people outside the party. It is a prerogative the president should exercise and we cannot question that. We are quite happy about the way he is proceeding,” he said.

“We have a very capable president. He is capable as ever. The president is a very careful man. He wants to be sure (that) the kind of people he will appoint are people who are passionate about the country. What is really important is the speed of the delivery of his policies. You can see that things are already improving in spite of that fact. You can see in the electricity front, the supply of petroleum, etc.

“What the president is doing is to conduct a very thorough check on the background of the people he will appoint. They should just be patient. He does not want to make avoidable mistakes.”

Speaking on his rumoured interest to be the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), Oyegun said it was a blatant lie.

“On this issue of SGF, I will say this quite definitely: I have not in anyway, in capital letters and underlined, solicited for any position other than the national chairmanship of APC. I think I am clear enough, isn’t it? And nobody has approached me on that: that he (Buhari) is considering me either for that position or another.”

Reacting on the crisis in the National Assembly, the national chairman disclosed that the party was working hard to resolve the matter and reunite the factions.

“All the party has decided to do is to reunify as quickly as possible our members in both chambers of the National Assembly under the existing realities. That is the first priority; every other thing will follow. All other thing will have to wait. This is because, if, for instance, the president says he wants to present his list of ministerial nominees to the Senate, we don’t want a situation whereby the Senate will be divided. So, we are trying to sort that out; it is our number one priority. We are happy that we are arriving at an amicable settlement of the situation; this one cannot wait for long; it has to be immediately.

“Let me assure the public that peace is on the way. We had a problem in the family, no doubt about that, but we are moving quickly to resolve it. As you can see, we are working hard to see that the leaders and rank and file don’t start throwing punches,” he said.

Buhari explains delay in appointment of ministers

President Muhammadu Buhari has attributed the delay in his appointment of ministers to the late submission of the transition committee’s report on the previous administration to him.

Buhari made this known yesterday while speaking to newsmen at the African Union Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The president said that he was being careful in order not to make mistakes in appointing individuals, especially to key positions such as in the finance and petroleum ministries.

“I don’t know why people are so anxious about ministers, but eventually we will have (them).

“But the main reason is that I have an interim committee which I agreed with the former President Jonathan that the ministers of the outgoing government should hand over their notes or their documents to this interim committee so that a position can be prepared for the new government to start from, with clear records from ministers.

“The ministers knew that they were going, but the technocrats, the permanent secretaries and directors and so on, they know they would remain. If anything goes wrong, they would be invited to explain, but unfortunately the outgoing government did not cooperate.

“So, what the committee did was to divide itself into about five sub-committees and got a resource person that was willing to come and bring the document, and so they prepared and I got the report, I think, three days ago.

“I was waiting for this report because I would like to know what position in the government (to appoint persons), especially in terms of finance and petroleum industry. So, I am not in a hurry to get ministers.

“I want to get ministers after, at least, I have seen the report because I don’t have to appoint a minister today and sack him the next week because this report would give me what actually happened in terms of security, economy of the country.”

The president said that since some of the ministers would be politicians and technocrats, he would not like to make the mistake of appointing persons who had been indicted on issues to do with accountability.

Buhari noted that he, Jonathan and former head of state, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, had agreed to let the former ministers hand over their notes to the interim committee he had formed. He said that the planned examination of the hand over notes had to be suspended when the outgoing ruling party accused his then incoming administration of forming a parallel government.

According to him, he wanted to get a platform from the former ministers on which to start from following the problem of accountability in the past administration.

The president recalled that his time as minister of petroleum during the General Olusegun Obasanjo military regime, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had only three accounts, but that during the immediate past administration, the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance did not know how many accounts they had, which he described as improper.

On the emergence of Sen. Abubakar Saraki as Senate president, the president admitted that the fallout of the National Assembly leadership election had brought division within the All Progressives Congress (APC) in spite of the moves by the party to avert a crisis, but that the onus was on the National Assembly to resolve the issue as it had its own rules for choosing its officers, which was why he did not want to interfere in the exercise.

On the issue of Boko Haram, Buhari said the problem had been internationalized and expressed his happiness with the support coming from Nigeria’s neighbours and the G7 towards ending insurgency.

Source: Leadership