Opinion: If I were President Buhari…

 

President Muhammadu Buhari

 

Imagine having an excellent idea. Also imagine how helpful this idea could be, not only to yourself but to an extended number of friends and relations.
Imagine too, how unfortunate it would be, if one of those anticipated beneficiaries should be behind a plot to thwart this good intention.
Nothing can be frustrating than an unappreciated genuine sacrifice. But your best friend, they say could be your worst enemy. When President Muhammadu Buhari resumed duty in Aso Rock as the fourth democratically elected leader of Nigeria since 1999, he left no one in doubt about his love and belief in the capacity of civil servants especially the bureaucrats to deliver, at least, as key assistants in the execution of government policies and programmes.
For about three months, President Buhari kept Nigerians in suspense. He ran the government without a cabinet, (the Federal Executive Council). While that lasted, President Buhari explained that but for the country’s constitution, he would work without ministers and operate with civil servants who remained the engine for the implementation of government programmes.
As far as the President was concerned, political appointees, especially those who occupied the positions of ministers were noise makers.
“It is what we know-and which we learnt from the western system. The civil service provides the continuity, the technocrat. And in any case, they are those that do most of the work. The ministers are there, I think to make a lot of noise,” he told a foreign television station last year.
During the period, President Buhari received weekly briefs from Federal Permanent Secretaries and other heads of parastatals and agencies on the true position of state affairs, so he could set in motion the direction of his government.
They had a field day. Once that was over, he first sacked not less than 17 permanent secretaries and appointed a new Head of Service for the Federation Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita.
This action indeed sent an early signal that something was wrong.

The President may have gotten inkling that these set of technocrats he had so praised openly could be the major problem of his government.
If not checked, maybe, they could stand in the way of his new agenda of purging the Nigerian system of its cancerous corruption. Unfortunately, this has played out with the recent revelation that, yet to be identified persons in the civil service aided the padding up of the 2016 Appropriation Bill currently before the National Assembly for consideration and passage into law.
Like the President himself, many Nigerians were astonished by the development which also generated friction between the legislature and the executive.
At some point, the Senate had even accused the presidency of being responsible for a perceived disappearance of the appropriation bill.
The other time, news filtered into the air that President Buhari’s Special Adviser on Senate Matters Ita Inang had smuggled in a different version of the budget from the one presented to the joint session of the National Assembly in December 2015.
Soon after, the presidency uncovered what it described as systematic corrupt practices by top government officials who assisted in the preparation of the appropriation bill.
There are indications that the Federal Government had also engaged a few consultants from the private sector to join these officers. Whether they collaborated in this sharp practice is a subject for another day.
In the near past, what Nigerians knew that budget padding was a system where top government officials including even cabinet ministers connived with members of the National Assembly (NASS) to inject certain figures into the budget with the hope of pulling out these funds during implementation.
Often times, this was done during the budget defence by the respective Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government. Like I said, this was done with the inputs of the lawmakers.
But this time, the padding was done outside of the NASS as being claimed even without the knowledge of ministers. Obviously, this is the more reason why the issue generated the controversy too.

The Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole had to come publicly to disown his ministry’s budget claiming that it was not what was initially submitted.
But, the only known scapegoat from this crisis at the moment is the sacked Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation Yahaya Gusau. He is believed to have failed to effectively deliver on his duties.
Agreed that it may not be possible for the President to peruse the voluminous financial document to scrutinise what has been imputed.
The question is that what specific role did the Minister of Budget, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma play in this case? He has since been given a clean bill of health by the President himself.
Notwithstanding this drama, it is critical to understand that a serious crime has been committed against the Nigerian state and its people. For me, this is not less than a treasonable felony, in this case, “a group of persons not necessarily planning to overthrow the government” but to undo government.
There is a wider conspiracy to this whole thing, one that was designed to sabotage the new government which is perceived to be coming with a bang of effective force to rubbish the works of the past and present itself as a saint.
If I were the President, with this revelation I would work to ensure that Nigerians begin to see the country above party lines. Presently, it is about we and them but not about the project Nigeria.
This is why President Buhari needs to act fast and in fact, unmask the faces of those behind this dastardly act of budget padding which sadly is tailored to further worsen the present poor economic situation faced by the country.
Nigerians need to know them. The threat to punish them is not enough.