Oga, it is good to hurry up

I was puzzled by a story yesterday quoting the new Governor of Nasarawa State, Engineer Abdullahi Alhaji Sule, as saying that he will not be in a hurry to appoint his cabinet. Speaking in Lafia on Sunday, Sule reportedly said, “I will not be in a hurry to appoint my commissioners because doing that will […]

I was puzzled by a story yesterday quoting the new Governor of Nasarawa State, Engineer Abdullahi Alhaji Sule, as saying that he will not be in a hurry to appoint his cabinet. Speaking in Lafia on Sunday, Sule reportedly said, “I will not be in a hurry to appoint my commissioners because doing that will lead me into mistakes.” He added, “I just started working on Thursday and we are studying the handover book. I have also started meeting with all the permanent secretaries, government agencies and different people.” The governor said he also met with some local government chairmen as well as heads of security agencies on the need to improve security in the state.

Which is all very good, except that I have some issues with the pledge to go slow in making key appointments. To be fair, Sule has already appointed several special assistants. Nor can he appoint Special Advisers until the State Assembly approves a certain number. It is commissioners that he said he is not in a hurry to appoint; unfortunately, commissioners are the most important appointments that he has got to make. The only other appointments that are as important are Secretary to the State Government [SSG], Head of Service, Chief of Staff and every now and then, a Chief Judge or an Emir or first-class Chief. These last three are however circumscribed by rules and by kingmakers’ input, so the governor may not always get what he wants.

When the governor says he is not in a hurry, what time frame is he thinking about? A week, a month, several months, a year? The first problem with delay is negative public perception. When a leader is slow to make appointments, his constituents variously think he is slow, indecisive, unprepared, ungrateful, cruel or worse. In the same Nasarawa State, a governor once took six months to appoint an SSG; he ended up retaining the one he inherited from his predecessor. That kind of thing sends the wrong message across the board, creates anxiety and snipping among party leaders, and also renders the governor ineffective in carrying out his wishes and programs. Another reason for hurrying up is that one does not know what a new day will bring forth.

In any case, Engineer Sule did not become the governor last week, when he was inaugurated. If the Supreme Court ruling of 1999 in the case of Atiku Abubakar/Boni Haruna ticket is anything to go by, he became governor two months earlier, in March, when he won the election. Sure there was another man ruling the state at the time and Chief Obasanjo once said that in Africa, you cannot have two village heads at the same time. But nothing stopped the Governor-elect from quietly penciling down the names of the men and women he wanted to appoint as commissioners.

Afterall, he had been through a party primary and a general election campaign, had met everyone who mattered in the party, had toured all the local governments and had met hundreds, if not thousands of people. He could also do with advice from the former governor, who by now knows Nasarawa people and officials like the back of his hand. On top of that, Governor Sule came to the governorship from the belly of private sector industry, one of the best places to know people. Now, if despite all these he does not know the people to appoint as commissioners, it is too late to know others, because all the people he is going to meet now are playing to the gubernatorial gallery and he will never know their true value.

Governor Sule also said the main reason why he is not in a hurry to appoint commissioners is because it could lead him to make mistakes. Well, Governor, I have news for you. Your first mistake is to delay in making the appointments. And when you finally get around to making them, you will still make some mistakes. There is nothing like a perfect cabinet anywhere in the world, and there should never be. If cabinets are perfect, the world will be a very uninteresting place. It was not for nothing that the German national football team, called the ‘German machines’ for their technical perfection, did not excite fans around the world nearly as much as Brazilians and Argentinians did, complete with Diego Maradona’s Hand of God.

Let us tie up Governor Sule’s statement with another one he made ten days to his inauguration, on May 19, when he said “only competent politicians will be appointed into his cabinet.” Daily Trust’s reporter in Lafia quoted him as saying, “I want to hit the ground running and the best way to do it, is to appoint competent people whether politicians or not, to move Nasarawa State to the next level of development given its vast natural and human resources.”The latest statement about being deliberately slow in appointing commissioners does not tie up with the earlier pledge to hit the ground running.

And then, what exactly does it mean to be a competent person for appointment as commissioner? Is it good looks, rich CV, personal loyalty, filial connection, political sagacity, drive during the campaign, control of a party faction, popularity in his locality, grassroots touch, connection to the elite, generous campaign donor, a dangerous foe that needs to be silenced, or exactly what? Each of those qualities could be both an asset and a danger, so the governor must still evaluate them carefully. The good thing about it is, you can remove a commissioner with one stroke of the pen. Remember what the then Borno Governor Ali Modu Sheriff did when his Commissioner for Religious Affairs, alleged Boko Haram financier Alhaji Buji Foi, entered his office and said he was quitting. Sheriff got his staff to delay the man for half an hour while he hurriedly put out a statement on radio saying he had reshuffled his cabinet and dropped him.

Only that, Engineer Sule is right, a governor would not want to be dropping commissioners if he can help it. It could be personally traumatic. Resistance to dropping a commissioner could easily come from the governor’s wife, who might have struck up a nice relationship with the commissioner’s wife. More seriously, when a man who has served in a cabinet for years, has acquired wealth and IOUs is dropped, he goes straight to become the governor’s political enemy. So, the fewer commissioners a governor drops during his tenure, the better for him, especially if, like Sule, he is a first term governor.

Governor Sule [and all other curious new governors who are eavesdropping on this conversation] could however benefit from an advice that the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari gave to the late Major General Shehu Yar’adua in 1992. The presidential aspirant had called on the former president at his Shagari home during a campaign trip to Sokoto, and he introduced his entourage by indicating that they were all good men and women. Shagari however said, “In assembling a campaign team, don’t assemble only good people. Bad people also have a role to play. An assignment could come up that a good person cannot do. So, there is a role for everyone.” I suspect that the same wisdom applies to governance; people adjudged to be ‘incompetent’ could pull certain chestnuts out of the fire better than ‘competent’ people.

Then there is the small matter of time. Four years might look like a lot of time but ask all those who have been through that office before; time passed as if in a trance. The government can never properly take off without commissioners, who are the political heads of their ministries and also members of the State Executive Council. One of the most popular adages written on the wooden body of Nigerian lorries in the 1970s was, “Time waits for no man.” Those drivers of old knew what they were talking about.