- Dead appointees, duplication of names are pointers to institutional rot
Governance is a rigorous process, not a tea party. More so, the presidency ought to be the heart and soul of any country and therefore, must represent the epitome of efficiency and good judgment. However, when this high office is seen to falter in routine clerical tasks, there is surely cause for concern as to how the country is run.
The howling faux pas in which the list of 1,468 board appointees released by the Presidency is littered with names of dead persons as well as multiple entries has proved unsettling for not a few Nigerians.
In the first place, previous governments often managed to conclude board appointments in the first six months to one year of coming to office. As noted by the Presidency, the constitution of the boards was very necessary in providing proper governance and oversight structure for government agencies and parastatals.
What it means is that the delay in filling these nearly 2,000 critical positions of government for more than two years must have hampered the effectiveness of this administration considerably. For instance, many of the federal medical centres have been embroiled in crises in the last two years as staff and union members engaged in crippling tussles with their chief medical directors. The mediating and stabilising influences of the chairmen and boards have been absent.
And the question is, if it took so long to do, why has the outcome been less than salutary? Why the sloppy execution of an already delayed task?
The explanation by one of the presidential spokesmen, Mallam Garba Shehu, does not seem to hold water; rather, it seems to make a bad case worse. That the names of appointees was compiled in 2015 and could not be released until now as a result of the president’s illness does not justify the common errors in the simple process of conducting appointments to government offices.
The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), which is directly responsible for this task, is quite a big one comprising a number of permanent secretaries, among other high ranking staff. It is not out of place to invite and sight every Federal Government appointee; or at the minimum, speak with them on the telephone before names are made public. It costs nothing to develop such capacity in the office of the SGF.
This minimum interface with a prospective appointee would eliminate such embarrassing blips as we have experienced in this case. It will further help to eliminate those who are terminally ailing or those not altogether inclined for such appointments for genuine personal reasons.
Not long ago, in this same government, some persons had openly declined appointments because they were not spoken to before the announcements were made. A lady, a former minister, was said to have declined because she is said to be suffering from cancer while another indicated that he was not willing to leave his current job.
To announce appointments at the level of the Presidency without a prior notice to, or discussion with, appointees signposts gross inefficiency and a total lack of rigour where it is most required.
Another source of worry in all of this is whether we need so many agencies and parastatals – over 2,000 of them in this digital age of virtual offices and smart work. The Stephen Oronsaye Panel was about pruning and merging these agencies. President Muhammadu Buhari had also promised to trim Nigeria’s bogus bureaucracy and cut wastes. But nothing has been done in this regard.
We certainly do not need this number of agencies. So many of them are mere hollow shells adding no value but on the other hand, serving as a veritable drain pipe to the economy. These setups have become decrepit lounging places for any ruling party political touts and marabouts who see these appointments as their entitlements to the national cake.
Beyond ineptitude, the Presidency announcing a long list of appointees with dead persons’ names on it is symptomatic of organisational deficiency and a failure of institution. We suggest a total rethink of this system.
