‘Men’ that ought not to be in PMB’s government

By Edward Nnachi

This piece is loaded with uninvited advice. It ordinarily should not have been written, but for recent evidence that the quality of advice available to President Muhammadu Buhari is questionable. Friends of people in power often speak in hushed tones about how the President never listens, about how difficult it is to approach him let alone sell an argument to him once his mind is made up. However, anyone who watched the Special Assistant to the President on Prosecution, Okoi Obono-Obla on Channels TV on Monday will agree that we can’t leave Buhari to his advisers.

This list is inexhaustible; it only profiles three or so federal government appointees who, with an ideal President in charge, would have already lost their jobs last week. As occasion demands, it will be torn like ex Olusegun Obasanjo’s PDP membership card and replaced with new names. It took Buhari himself six months to assemble his ministers; therefore, it would be impossible for a journalist to gather the bad eggs in one fell swoop.

All names on the list earned a spot either by virtue of their role in or their analysis of the botched civil service recall of Abdulrasheed Maina, former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), who is wanted by the Nigerian Police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the INTERPOL for multibillion-naira pension fraud.

Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice
The ‘guy’ is still the Attorney General of the Federation? Shocking but not so shocking, because this is Nigeria. As has now been made public, it was an April 2017 letter from him that triggered a string of processes that culminated in Maina’s secret reinstatement. In that letter, he urged the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) to “give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant of arrest issued against A.A. Maina, which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal”.

His letter is misleading. Contrary to the AGF’s letter, the arrest warrant was not the basis of Maina’s dismissal from service in 2013. Rather, it was Maina’s abscondment from duty. The undercurrents of his action are not all public yet, but there is scant truth in his claim that he was guided by “law and public interest”. His interests are private.

Unfortunately for the ‘change’ regime Buhari professes to be running, a figure like him, sympathetic to the course of persons of questionable characters, will constitute an impediment to the anti-graft cause. Since he could not advise Maina to first clear his name in court as precondition for his reinstatement, the AGF should follow the fugitive through the exit door.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media
After two years in office, this ‘guy’, one of Buhari’s two spokesmen, is still obsessed with Jonathan. To him, “some influential officials loyal to the previous government may have been the invisible hand in the latest scandal that saw the return of Maina to the public service, despite being on the EFCC’s wanted list”. He views Maina as “one of the monsters created by the former PDP government, and which are still rearing their ugly heads long after the party was soundly defeated in the 2015 elections”. We had thought his announcement of rat infestation at Buhari’s office was the worst we would get, but this? No.

Special Adviser to the President on Prosecution
Nigerians were still trying to make sense of Maina’s reinstatement when this ‘guy’ appeared on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily to defend the indefensible, arguing that since Maina “had not been found guilty of any offence”, he did “not see why some people are outraged”.

He even substituted himself for Maina. “If the EFCC declares me wanted, that does not mean that I have been adjudged guilty,” he said.

“It is only a court of competent jurisdiction that can adjudge anybody guilty.” He must have been red-faced a few hours later when Buhari ordered Maina’s disengagement from the civil service. Being a lawyer and the presidential adviser on prosecutions, he should have known that the court could not have declared guilty, a man who fled from trial.

Had Buhari sought this ‘guy’s advice before acting, he would have been encouraged to keep the fugitive in service until conviction by the courts that he was running away from. People like him do not belong in Buhari’s government; people like him are enemies of the people — enemies of the poor, aged pensioners who have been denied the fruit of their labour by the greed of a few people among whom, according to the EFCC, is Maina. Nigerians should use their sharp brains to figure out who these ‘guys’ talked about above are.

The President?
Mr. President will himself deserve a place on this list if more than one of these men retains his office by the time the Maina probe is done and dusted. It is one thing for a President to have the wrong hands in government; it is another for him to possess the balls to replace them.

And this is not too hard to do. Even Jonathan, the one widely believed to be weak, fired (although reluctantly) Stella Oduah as Minister of Aviation, following her indictment by two panels that probed the purchase of two bullet-proof cars for N255m and the approval of N643m for the purchase. If a weak civilian did this, it can’t be too much to expect from a stone-cold retired Major-General.

If he can’t dismiss his under-performing appointees, then Buhari is the number-one albatross of his own government.

Nnachi is a member of the Editorial Board of Daily Times, nnachieddyugbor@gmail.com.