The ball is now in the court of President Bola Tinubu and his cabinet as Nigerians expect that there should not be any excuse again about performance or none performance, because they will benchmark them based on their Renewed Hope Agenda. Sources who spoke with Sunday Telegraph in the course of the week said that the key thing still remains the economy and they believe that just like under former President Olusegun Obasan- jo, the right person for the job has been sourced and given the task of rejigging the country’s economy.
Wale Edun come highly recommended and the tax team which is going to work with him, put together by the President, they will work together. They believe that with this, things should change. “However,” one of the sources said: “Their work is not cut out for them because the enormity of the destruction of the last eight years, the mess of the last eight years is gargantuan and it will take them all their acquit to be able to rescue the Naira from its free fall. “The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under Godwin Emefiele virtually surrendered its powers to the presidency.
Therefore, instead of calling the presidency to order and guiding the President on Monetary Terms, he was just acquiescing, he was just doing whatever the President wanted and that was mainly responsible for the fate of the Naira.” Our Source continued: “One interesting thing is that this President may not suffer any fool gladly. He wants his ministers to perform and he does not want anybody to become a liability in terms of their relationships with people and their relationships with their constituents, so he would watch them.
“The President has put some mechanisms in place so that before they derail, they will be called to order, especially from the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, they will keep a very close tab on them. “There is already a Monitoring Team in the Presidency. They will work incognito and will report directly to the President. The Chief of Staff to the President will also play a role in that. He will call them to question if there are issues and will report them to the President, if there is any Lacuna in the performance of their duties.”
Even before then, Sunday Telegraph gathered that the president has come under intense pressure to bring former governor Nasir El – rufai back in to the cabinet after the Senate refused to confirm his nomination on the grounds Last week, this Newspaper reported that there were more than the security reports be- ing bandied about. One of the reasons was that there were quite a number of people who wanted to pay him back in his own coins. That he upset the delicate religious and political balance of the state by his utterances and actions, while in office.
Our Sources said those close to El-rufai believe that he was set up for humiliation and that the Tinubu camp did not do enough to save him from the Senate. And that if the security apparatus was in the hand of the President and so he could have done the needful in ensuring that he was given an easy passage. Another source said he and his supporters are setting with rage. While some are reaching out to the president that he should be accommodated, he is now very reluctant that after his humiliation publicly, he does not want it. That is why his nominee has not been officially endorsed.
That is why the Minister of the Environment which has been zoned to Kaduna State is left vacant.” One week after the Ministers were inaugurated, it is still generating ripples across the country, “of course they have issues with the person they said did not do her NYSC. “They believe that the President and his team did not do due diligence in spite of the time they had, all this shows tardiness in their way of handling things. All those things which were supposed to have been done by them, they left undone. If for instance, you are unable to know this, with all the tentacles and power of government, what else?
“Of course, a lot of people believe that they do not want Dele Alake to be dugged like Lai Mohammed was dugged. That was what actually informed the swapping of the portfolio with another. Already they said that people were saying it would be difficult or hard to sell the administration to the people. They were seeing him in the mold of Lai Mohammed. But in spite of the fact that he is in charge of Solid Minerals, he remains one of the closest persons to the President, who would still be his media person managing his media and public relations.
They have a team where Ajuri Ngelale is just the face, but he would work behind the scenes. “There is a presidential media team, which is solid and they have come way back. Sunday Dare, (immediate past Minister of Sports), Gbenga Omotoso would also be indirectly giving them support, Dele Alake would give them support, Bayo Onanuga would give them support; they wanted to avoid the kind of demonization that happened to Lai Mohammed. They felt that even from the onset, people were already looking at them in that mode. It was a last-minute thing.
“When it was decided that they do not want him demonized and they do not want a Minister of Information with liability from the outset, that was what informed that change and when that change was made, it was out of that they asked him which ministry he would like to go, it was then he elected to go for the Solid Mineral. The choice of Wike for Abuja was also very strategic. They needed somebody who would work in a way that would bring some sanity to the FCT. It is also strategic that he is the first minister of Southern extraction since the advent of civil rule.
The last time they had a minister of the FCT was when Abuja was just being founded in 1976 or so. Meanwhile, the North is livid with the choice of Nyesom Wike as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory on two grounds. They do not like him, they do not like his politics. They believe that some of his utterances are targeted at a particular section of the country. The emerging power of the Lagos boys, Oyetola has also joined them. This manifested in the change of portfolio overnight. He is now part of the Lagos Mafia as some people call them.
A lot of people are also saying that Tinubu has said through his spokesperson that you cannot be taking all the post to Yoruba land without doing what you have accused Buhari of doing is what you are doing. The North is not comfortable and the issue of the Kaduna nominee in the person of Nasir El–Rufai has not abated. It has been so that some people have reached out to Tinubu that he should find a way to ensure that El – rufai comes back into the cabinet. But El rufai believes that he was humiliated, he is keeping his game plan close to his chest.
Some people are saying that if you do not want to give him a ministerial appointment, can you make him an ambassador to a major country, so that he would be compensated for the work he did for you. He was one of those who worked assiduously to ensure that you got the party’s ticket during the primaries. In Osun, the choice of Oyetola has deepened the division in that party. Because of that there was a resurgence of Aregebesola when he launched his Omoluabi faction. But he did not call it a faction; he called it the Omoluabi Caucus. It is obvious that there is no let off. Aregbesola has been let out of the Lagos Caucus.
