A Brutally Frank President Betrays Reluctance over Ministers-Tobi Soniyi

 President Muhammadu Buhari

• Says civil servants run government, ministers make noise

Displaying a lack of confidence in politicians-turned-ministers to help him run his government, President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday said civil servants and technocrats contribute more to the day-to-day running of the public sector while ministers “make a lot of noise”.

In a brutally frank interview with French television station, France 24, the president said civil servants run the government competently.

Buhari, who has delayed the appointment of his cabinet almost four months after he assumed office, also said the markets were not being harmed by the delay in ministerial appointments, which he said would happen by the end of the month.

He said: “No. 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 the people who do most of the work.

“The ministers are there, I think, to make a lot of noise – for the politicians to make a lot of noise. But the work is being done by the technocrats. They are there, they have to provide the continuity, dig into the records and then guide us – those of us who are just coming in.

“They have been there, some of them for 15 years, some for 20 years. So I think this question of ministers is political. People from different constituencies want to see their people directly in government, and see what they can get out of it.”

He however restated his commitment to naming his cabinet before the end of the month, albeit reluctantly.

“As for the cabinet, I said we will have one by the end of the month, and time flies. The end of the month is coming too quickly for my liking. I will stick to it. I will send the names to the National Assembly,” he said.

Reminded by his interviewer that “some have quipped that the country runs better without ministers”, the president said: “When you started introducing me, you said I was around in 1983 to 1985.

“Even then we had ministers. So under this system, we have to have ministers, and we are going to have ministers.”
Comparing his time in government 30 years ago with today, Buhari added: “The last time I was here, I was in barracks, this time I’m in a palace, I still need to find my way, it’s so big and must be very, very expensive to maintain, but it’s there and cannot be removed.

“I believe firmly that multiparty democratic system is the best form of government but elections must be free and fair, otherwise, it’s the same old problem.”

The president also told newsmen the same day that the federal government was talking to Boko Haram prisoners in their custody and could offer them amnesty if the extremist group hands over more than 200 schoolgirls abducted last year.

Buhari added that he was confident “conventional” attacks by the group would be rooted out by November — but cautioned that deadly suicide attacks were likely to continue, reported AFP.

“The few (prisoners) we are holding, we are trying to see whether we can negotiate with them for the release of the Chibok girls,” Buhari said in an interview in Paris during a three-day visit to France. “If the Boko Haram leadership eventually agrees to turn over the Chibok girls to us — the complete number — then we may decide to give them (the prisoners) amnesty.”

His statement contrasted with the one he made on Tuesday in France when he said he would not release a major bomb maker of Boko Haram currently in government custody for the return of the girls.

Boko Haram fighters stormed a school in the remote northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok on April 14 last year, seizing 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams in an abduction that shocked the world.

Fifty-seven escaped, but nothing has been heard of the 219 others since May last year, when about 100 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video, dressed in Muslim attire and reciting the Koran.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has since said they have all converted to Islam and been “married off”.

Buhari, who has promised to stamp out the group’s bloody six-year insurgency, said the government would not release any prisoners unless it was convinced it could “get the girls in reasonably healthy condition”.

But he cautioned that negotiating with Boko Haram militants was fraught with difficulties. “We are trying to establish if they are bona fide, how useful they are in Boko Haram, have they reached a position of leadership where their absence is of relevance to the operation of Boko Haram?” he said.

Boko Haram’s insurgency, which has claimed more than 15,000 lives and forced 1.5 million others out of their homes, has intensified since Buhari came to power on May 29 on the back of a historic election win.

While it has lost territory it once controlled in northeastern Nigeria, the group has nevertheless stepped up deadly ambushes in its traditional heartland and across the border in Cameroun and Chad.

In August, Buhari gave a brand new set of military chiefs a three-month deadline to end the insurgency. He said yesterday that he was confident this deadline would be met — but only on Boko Haram’s “conventional” assaults and not necessarily on the random suicide attacks that have killed hundreds since he took office.

“The main conventional attacks, where Boko Haram use armoured cars they took from Nigerian troops, or mounted machine-guns on pick-ups and so on, we believe by the end of the three months, we will see the back of that,” he said.
“What may not absolutely stop is the occasional bombings by the use of improvised explosive devices,” he cautioned. “We do not expect a 100 per cent stoppage of the insurgency.”

Culled from Thisday