.As a Mental Health Clinician by certification and license in New York, I begin the treatment of my client by starting where the client is and not where I want him or her to be by the time I am done with the patient
By the same token I cannot do justice to this subject without first and foremost exploring where Nigeria is right now.
The country is in a very bad shape right now because there is just too much controversy about where the close to 95 percent of our externally generated revenues in foreign currency come from and where close to 60 percent of our local and foreign expenditure are expended.
The NNPC which manages and market our oil and gas which account for 95 percent of our total revenues is so corruptly managed that it cannot pass any serious audit as we speak.
Today the Removal of Oil Subsidy is said to be the Alfa and Omega of our Budget problems and yet we still cannot agree on to whom the subsidy was paid and for how long?
The great majority of the oil marketers and importers have come out to deny ever receiving subsidy from anyone.
So when our leaders and the new President tell the whole nation that oil subsidy has been removed by his predecessor and he fully supported the removal, we expect some draconian change in the “status quo” of Nigeria.
Nigeria is supposed to get an immediate relief and the cost of oil per liter is supposed to immediately fall from 185 Naira per liter but the reality on the ground has shown the opposite.
The price of oil has quadrupled overnight making life totally impossible and unsustainable for the great majority of Nigerians as we speak.
That is the “status quo” I need to first of all address before I comment on the President’s Ministerial list which many have praised and which many have criticized the last time I checked.
The President is supposed to submit his Ministerial list within 60 days of his swearing-in as specified by the Constitution.
He would appear to have done that on July 27 by submitting a list comprising of 28 names with a promise to submit the remainder in a short order.
The names were submitted without indicating what ministries they are going to head or preside on.
So if the President assigns a carpenter to do the job of a plumber for any reason at all, how for goodness sake does that help the Senate in performing their oversight and confirmation role?
Just looking at their well padded curriculum vitae does not offer too much help to the Senators and calling them in to just bow and leave is a disservice to the nation, if you really think about it.
That is a legitimate question to raise.
No President in the American system we have plagiarized in Nigeria would ever send a name to the Senate without specifying the Department they are going to head and run.
It is a recipe for disaster just like when delusional Donald Trump arrogantly nominated a brain surgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and his Republican- controlled Senate stupidly confirmed him.
Yes, the President reserves the right to appoint whoever he wants so those criticizing his nominees are being disingenuous in my opinion.
The President has an obligation to appoint those who have tirelessly worked and assisted him to become President and his Party operatives who help to put him in office.
You will all recall that Nasir El Rufai had led the 14 Governors of the APC who had rejected the last ditch effort of President Buhari working in tandem with Chairman Abubakar Adamu to force the last Senate President Ahmed Lawan on Nigeria as their candidate of choice and their so-called Consensus candidate 24 hours before their Party’s Convention in a Palace Coup that would have ended the presidential ambition and the political career of Tinubu right there and then.
El Rufai has earned his right to be on that list. Why not if not?
Onyesom Wike’s nomination was also to reward him for the role he had played in truncating the ambition of Atiku Abubakar by breaking up the PDP into factions – a move that ultimately worked in favor of Tinubu to win the highest number of votes in an election the APC was supposed to lose in a landslide.
President Tinubu has done as much as can be expected of him in compiling that list in his own best interest and inspite of all the problems he faces from the PDP which came second and even from the Labor Party which came third.
This point takes me to the hopelessness of not asking the Election Tribunal to complete their job before the victorious candidate is sworn in.
The development is like putting the Cart before the Horse which is clearly absurd and a reprehensible waste of time and money for a country in a financial quagmire and distress like Nigeria.
The new President under the current arrangement can hardly focus all of his attention on doing his job to the best of his ability when he still has to worry about what is going on in the Tribunal and how the outcome might impact his tenure in office. Ned Media a privately owned podcast on You Tube and many others supporting Peter Obi are busy confusing Nigerians by openly broadcasting falsehood and presenting them as facts to influence the judges of the Tribunal. The sooner we hear from the Tribunal the better.
It is easy to conjecture how the Tinubu has emerged as the winner of the APC Primaries in Abuja.
He could never have become the nominee of the APC, or be elected President, if the PDP had not blown its chances by breaking up into factions before the elections.
There were apparent election malpractices here and there in all of the major Parties participating in the elections but not big enough to drastically affect the outcome of the Presidential election on February 25th.
The APC was able to win like it did based on the polarization of the PDP and not so much because of election rigging as the PDP and the Labor Party would have us believe.
I see in that first ministerial list that President Tinubu has done his best in maintaining some balance in the nomination and I believe he has lived up to his promise to pay attention to the yearnings and the demands of the Youths and Women as major interest group in Nigeria.
There are a few old hands in that list and he needs to add them for his own political survival in his Party.
I would grade the President a B- for now until I see his supplementary list which he has promised to submit to the Senate in about a week or two.
So far so good but he needs to act fast to assuage the anxiety and the frustration of Nigerians about the deteriorating state of the Nigerian Economy today and why Inflation has hit double digits as we speak.
I rest my case.
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