A President Without Ministers: Can Buhari Govern Nigeria?

“On hold” is how many Nigerians would describe how West Africa’s most-populous country of 178 million people currently feels.

It’s been more than 15 weeks since President Muhammadu Buhari, 72, won the March 28 presidential elections, but he is yet to appoint ministers. In fact, he says he will not form a cabinet before September.

The government is currently kept afloat by top civil officials, who can fulfil basic administrative duties but not make the key political decisions Buhari promised Nigerians when campaigning for office.

The former military leader was elected based on his pledge to end corruption in politics and the oil industry – Nigeria’s main revenue earner – and stop Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, which has killed an estimated 14,000 people since 2009.

But weeks have gone by and little has happened. Big political decisions have been stalled, while a new surge of Boko Haram attacks killed more than 430 people this
month alone.

“At this stage, government is only functioning at about 25 per cent,” warns David Zounmenou, researcher at the African Institute for Security Studies. “Buhari needs to
act quickly. He needs to assert his role.”

The elation felt after Buhari’s election and inauguration on May 29 is slowly dissipating. Nigerians hoped a page would be turned in the country where corruption in politics and the economy is almost endemic.

Without a cabinet “Buhari will not be able to make many necessary reforms to begin to deal with the many challenges facing his administration,” says Ernst Jan
Hogendoorn, Africa deputy director of research organization International Crisis Group.

The longer ministerial posts remain vacant, the more politically vulnerable Nigeria will become. “As a worst-case scenario, Buhari might lose control over the country because other people will take the gap and move in,” says Zounmenou.

The president says he is not in a hurry. “This task cannot and should not be rushed,” Buhari wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Monday, the day he met with US President Barack Obama.“Nigeria must first put new rules of conduct and good governance in place.”

The delay is among other things caused by ministers of the previous government who didn’t provide handover notes as promised, Buhari had explained earlier,pointing fingers at his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Buhari also has to manage a fierce internal power struggle for the top positions in government, including the crucial economy, finance and defence portfolios, within his All Progressives Congress (APC), a coalition of what used to be the country’s three biggest opposition parties.

“Buhari is trying to balance many competing interests,both within his coalition party and the different regions of Nigeria,” explains Hogendoorn.

A transition committee is now carefully vetting all candidates for corruption before drawing up a shortlist.
“Ministers will come when [Buhari] finishes scrubbing the floor which is littered with corruption,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu told dpa. “There are too many
leaks in the revenue system that must be plugged. He will not build on the rotten foundation [of Jonathan’s government].”

The cause is noble, but analysts doubt the president will be able to reach this goal after decades of rampant corruption in Nigerian politics. “A clean record is an impossible mission. In Nigeria’s political arena, it’s extremely difficult to find someone with clean record. I would say it’s not even two per cent of politicians,” says Zounmenou of the security studies institute.

With each week going by without a fully functioning government, the pressure on Buhari to act is increasing.

“I know [Nigerians] are impatient for action. I realize the world waits to see evidencenthat my administration will be different from all those that came before,” Buhari
admits in the op-ed. “Yet reforming my country after so many years of abuse cannot be achieved overnight.”


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