FG differs as Clark, others allege lopsidedness, Tinubu seeks Senate confirmation
President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday, which had Ogun State reportedly producing four ministers, the highest by a state in the cabinet, has sparked reactions across the country.
In a significant cabinet shakeup during the 19th Federal Executive Council meeting at the State House, Abuja, Tinubu approved the re-assignment of 10 ministers to new portfolios, discharged five others and nominated seven new ministerial appointees for onward transmission to the Senate for confirmation.
This came as the President renamed the Ministry of Nigeria Delta Development to the Ministry of Regional Development, scrapped the Ministry of Sports Development, and merged the Ministries of Tourism and Arts and Culture to become the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy.
The seven new ministers, pending their confirmation by the Senate, are Dr Jumoke Oduwole (Ogun State) as Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment; Dr Nentawe Yilwatda (Plateau) as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction; Muhammadu Dingyadi (Sokoto) as Minister of Labour & Employment; Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu (Imo) as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs; Idi Maiha (Kaduna) as Minister of Livestock Development; Yusuf Ata (Kano) as Minister of State, Housing and Urban Development and Dr Suwaiba Ahmad (Kano) as Minister of State for Education.
The incoming Dr Jumoke Oduwole joins Wale Edun (Minister of Finance), Dr Adekunle Salako, the new Minister of State for Health, who was previously Minister of State, Environment and Bosun Tijani (Minister of Communications and Digital Economy) as ministers of Ogun extraction.
Senate, SANs back FG
While the appointments of the four Ogun ministers raised eyebrows in some quarters, with some of the opinion that it fell short of the Federal Character criteria for appointments, Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character, Allwell Onyesoh (PDP, Rivers East), acknowledged that while the Federal Character was a constitutional matter, it wasn’t the sole criterion for selecting ministers and other high-level public office holders.
He said, “Yes, Federal Character is an important issue, and I am sure the President would not want to go against the Constitution. However, what the Constitution states is that one person per state, so, once that has been met, I am not sure there should be an issue.”
Senator Onyesoh added, “The Federal Character isn’t the only requirement; we need competent people. The Constitution also empowers the President to be proactive, which means he is allowed to bring efficient people on board to do their jobs.
“Why are people so critical of this administration? It wasn’t the same for the previous administration.”
The criticisms come as Ministers vehicles reduced President Tinubu on Thursday restricted Ministers, Ministers of State, and Heads of Agencies of the Federal Government to a maximum of three vehicles in their official convoys.
“No additional vehicles will be assigned to them for movement,” the President affirmed in a statement he signed Thursday titled, ‘President Tinubu issues new directives on reduction in cost of governance.’
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, who released the statement, said “The cost-cutting measure was announced today (Thursday) in a statement signed by the President.”
In January 2024, Tinubu issued a directive which the Presidency said was to reduce government expenditure.
The directive included reducing his entourage on foreign trips from 50 to 20 officials.
For local trips, he reduced it to 25 officials.
Similarly, he reduced the Vice President’s entourage to five officials on foreign trips and 15 for local trips.
In the directive, Tinubu also ordered all ministers, ministers of state, and heads of agencies to have at most five security personnel attached to them.
“The security team will comprise four police officers and one Department of State Services officer.
“No additional security personnel will be assigned, he ordered,” the statement read.
President Tinubu also instructed the National Security Adviser to engage with the Military, Paramilitary and Security Agencies to determine a suitable reduction in their vehicle and security personnel deployment.
The Presidency said “All affected officials are expected to comply with these new measures immediately, underscoring the urgency and seriousness of these changes.”
A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), also said there was no law that stopped the Nigerian President from appointing more than one minister from a state.
Agbakoba said it was the President’s prerogative to appoint any number of persons from a state to serve as ministers.
Agbakoba, who spoke to one of our correspondents via the telephone on Thursday, stated that the only restriction was that the ministers must be appointed across all 36 states.
“That’s the only restriction,” he said. So, one may say why four? But nothing stops the President from appointing even 10.
“There’s no law that says he can’t appoint more than one. The only thing the law says is that he must appoint one person from each state on the principle of Federal Character, so that every state feels included. The point is, are all the 36 states not represented in the cabinet? The minimum requirement is that there has to be one minister from all 36 states.”
Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, explained that the constitution stipulated that in appointing ministers, each state of the federation must have representatives.
He added that even though there was no requirement for equality in the number of ministers, the situation where one state had four ministers and another had only one was not good enough.
“I think that the situation whereby one state has four ministers, and another state has only one, does not augur well for inclusivity, for equity, and for justice. And in this particular instance, the government is saying that we should run an economy that is new and budget-friendly.
“So, to then bloat the ministers list by picking four people from a particular state is to give the impression that there are no people from other states,” he said.
“This current government should not replicate the errors of the past. I believe that if somebody is elected from a particular region, he should carry other regions along, so that we can reduce the agitation for separatism, agitation for autonomy and agitation for secession as being advocated by other sections of the country that are marginalised,” he said.
In his response Niyi Akintola (SAN), said the position of Section 14 was very clear as the general rule was to give each state one minister.
He said, “The President is bound to work very hard to ensure that each state gets one minister. And there is no state legally that doesn’t have one minister.
“The President has complied with the requirement of the law, the Constitution but, where you have discretion, you can use the discretion. Discretion is not mandatory but a duty is mandatory.
He further stated that the duty of the president was to ensure that no state should be without a minister.
“I am from Oyo state and we have only one minister and we are not complaining. Can you point out one state in Nigeria that doesn’t have a minister? One minister from Plateau State resigned and he was replaced with another one.
“I don’t know why people make noise where there are no issues, we should look at if he breached the Constitution, to me these are not issues,” he said.
Another senior Advocate of Nigeria, Wolemi Esan, said there was no restriction against a state having more than one minister.
Esan cited Section 147(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) that states that the President must appoint at least one minister from each state, who must be an indigene of that state.
“The Constitution specifies a minimum number of ministers per state but does not set a maximum. “Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no restriction against a state having more than one minister. “However, section 14(3) of the Constitution emphasises that the composition of the Federal Government should reflect the Federal Character, ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states in government,” he said.
However, Prof Mike Ozekhome (SAN) added that to appoint four ministers from Ogun, one of the smallest states in Nigeria, was against the provisions of the Constitution, particularly Section 141, Section 153 and Section 71 of the Third Schedule, Part One of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999.
According to him, all these sections deal with the principles of Federal Character, and they emphasise that Nigeria shall be a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice.
“So, by appointing one minister to join the three old ones, making four from Ogun State, the President has breached Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution, because he has appointed four people from the same state, Ogun, and from the same ethnic group of Yoruba, which is against the Constitution.
“By the way, the question must be asked, whether, the team carrying the ministerial lists has actually done anything to change the status quo. I think not. What I’ve seen, what I saw, is against what Nigerians were expecting. We were expecting an earthquake of change in the cabinet, because many of the ministers have shown themselves to be indolent and to be non-performing.
“Now, what we saw, the only ministry I believe that the President did very well is the ministry of Niger Delta, because he tried to stop wastages by bringing the Niger Delta Development Commission, the Northeast Development Commission, the Southwest Development Commission, and the Southeast Development Commission.
“All of them brought under the Ministry of Regional Development. But I believe that the Niger Delta, Northeast Development, Southwest, they were drainpipes where money was being guzzled into.
“But by removing them and collapsing them under the Ministry of Regional Development, I believe that some money would be saved there. But I would think that it should have gone far.
“I also like what he did with the Ministry of Sports Development, by scrapping it and taking the function of it to the National Sports Commission,” he said.
He further stated that many of the present ministries were not functional.
“Why would you have a different ministry for agriculture than another one for water resources? Why not collapse some of these ministries and name it as Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Rural Development? What is the difference between the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Blue Economy? Why don’t you collapse them? Blue Economy, where you are having fish, environment, where you also have fish and other things, why don’t you collapse them? Why would the President even introduce a new ministry of animal husbandry or cattle rearing? What is the meaning of that? Why don’t you just put that word quietly under the Ministry of Agriculture?
“So, I believe the President should go far, very far, in rejigging his cabinet, which for now is a drain pipe for the nation’s bigger resources.”
