Tension In Tinubu’s Cabinet Over Reshuffle As President Holds Strategic Meetings With Key Aides
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Monday, resumed work at State House, Abuja, after a two-week working vacation in the United Kingdom.
Tinubu, who returned to the country on Saturday, spent his first day at work having lengthy meetings with some of his aides, an indication that the purported cabinet reshuffle might happen sooner.
National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa, were among the early callers at the president’s office.
Another top official, who met with the president was his Special Adviser on Policy Coordination and Head of the Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Ms. Hadiza Bala-Usman.
Bala-Usman is the aide charged with the responsibility of evaluating the performances of all the president’s appointees, especially the ministers.
Others, who equally met with Tinubu, were Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake; Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji, who doubles as Special Adviser to the President on Revenue; and Minister of Works, Dave Umahi.
President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, were among those who stayed late in the office with Tinubu before he closed for the day and retired to his official residence, a stone throw from his office.
There were hints from reliable Villa sources that most of those the president met were either people who had roles to play in shoring up the economy or those with political and output evaluation tasks.
Tinubu had from the beginning of his administration hinted of plans to drop appointees considered unproductive or evaluated to have fallen short of expected delivery.
The suspicion that the anticipated cabinet reshuffle might happen very soon, probably in a matter of days, was further strengthened when Bala-Usman was sighted at the president’s office.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, and Senior Special Assistant to the President on Digital and New Media, O’tega Ogra, had told newsmen at State House on September 25 that the president had plans to rejig his cabinet soon.
Onanuga said there was no timeline to when Tinubu would reshuffle his cabinet, but disclosed that he had indicated his plan to reshuffle his cabinet.
He said, “I don’t have any timeline. The president has expressed his desire to reshuffle his cabinet and he will do it. I don’t know whether he’s going to do it before October 1, but he will surely do it.
“So that’s what I will say. He has not given us any timeline, but he will do it. He has expressed his plan he wants to do it.”
Shedding more light on the planned cabinet reshuffle, Ogra explained that the president would be guided by an empirical process, making reference to the performance indicator coordinated by Bala-Usman.
Ogra stated, “We also need to realise that the president’s decision to reshuffle is also based on empirical evidence. He has said it during the retreat for the ministers that they were going to have periodic reviews, and the decisions that are extracted from these reviews will be used to make that final decision.
“I know he’s gotten a couple of reports, and as Mr. Onanuga said, when he’s ready to do that, I believe he will.”
Ogra further disclosed that the president had instructed his ministers to actively promote the accomplishments of his administration.
He said, “The president has given an order to all his ministers at the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting to go out there and speak about the activities of his administration.
“Some of them have been media shy, television shy, radio shy, and he wants them to overcome all that and go out there and speak about what they have been doing.
“Because the feeling out there is that government is not doing enough, and the government has been doing a lot. It is up to them to go out there and blow their own trumpet. They should go out there and talk about what their ministries have been doing.”
