Nigerians were caught by surprise last week when President Muhammadu Buhari said he will expand the Federal Executive Council (FEC) by appointing more ministers. He spoke at the once in a blue moon National Executive Council [NEC] meeting of the All Progressives Congress, APC. He said “…the compressed Federal Executive Council will be expanded to bring in more supporters at federal level, with fresh ideas to be injected into the government. By the grace of God these appointments will be announced soon. Especially now that the economy is improving, we will have the resources to cater for the appointees.”
Buhari also promised to constitute the boards of Federal Government agencies. He said, “Last year I said we would re-constitute the boards of parastatals. I must regret the fact that we have not done so, for many reasons. Some of us in this meeting may know I had given instructions since October 2015 for this exercise to start. But there have been inordinate delays through several committees in an attempt to get the balance right and to make sure all parts of the country are equitably represented. On the other hand, I am keenly aware that our supporters are very eager for these appointments to be announced.”
By announcing the two measures in the same breath, Buhari gave an indication that the cabinet expansion is being done to please party supporters. A day to the NEC meeting, he met with many party leaders, all in an effort to address growing disaffection among APC chieftains. While appointing more ministers pleased APC chieftains, the announcement came as a rude shock to Nigerians, who suspect 2019’s approach is the reason for the policy about-turn. The president firmly promised in 2015 to trim the federal cabinet, which he said was necessary in order to cut cost of governance, increase efficiency and service delivery.
Previous PDP administrations mostly had 42 ministers. Apart from one minister per state as required by the Constitution, President Obasanjo started the tradition of appointing one additional minister per geo-political zone. Those six were the ones that the president personally chose while he allowed state PDP chapters to nominate ministerial candidates from their states. The six extra ministers chosen by the PDP presidents were usually technocrats with little party affiliation, such as former Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former FCT Minister Nasir el-Rufa’i. That tradition was maintained under Presidents Umaru Yar’adua and Goodluck Jonathan. Buhari however described the number of ministers then as bloated and he reduced them to the constitutional minimum. He also reduced the number of federal ministries from 28 to 22.
The decision to reverse himself on such an important symbolic issue does not do credit to the president and APC’s image and their promise of change. Buhari gave two reasons for the cabinet expansion. One is that the country now has money to pay them because recession has technically ended. That is a very bad rationale because it means his administration was waiting all along for international oil prices to pick up so that it will return to the profligate days of PDP. It means APC was never serious about change in the first place but only took some measures because of the economic recession.
Secondly, President Buhari also described the current FEC as “compressed” and said expanding it would bring in fresh ideas. How can a council of 36 ministers be described as compressed when the United States has only 15 cabinet secretaries, i.e. ministers? Even though it is said that two heads are better than one, 36 ministerial heads, if they are of the right quality, are enough to bring in any ideas that are needed for national development. We do not accept the argument that 42 or more ministers will have better ideas than 36 ministers because if we do, the presidency may wake up one day and say 100 ministers are needed to bring in more ideas than 50 ministers.
