Shehu Shagari: A president at work

Few Heads of State or government face a more strenuous working day than the President of Nigeria. When he is in Lagos his day starts at 5.30 a.m. Then he makes the first of his  five daily prayers. After taking a bath and having his breakfast, he is in his State House office before 8 […]

Few Heads of State or government face a more strenuous working day than the President of Nigeria. When he is in Lagos his day starts at 5.30 a.m. Then he makes the first of his  five daily prayers. After taking a bath and having his breakfast, he is in his State House office before 8 o’clock. To greet him  there are his personal staff: his doctor, the Chief of Personal  Staff, Mikail Prest, the Chief of Protocol, the Chief Press  Secretary and the Chief SpeechWriter. First there is mail to  look at. It is Prest’s job to go through this and prepare it for the  President, summarising letters as necessary. Shehu Shagari treats his personal mail seriously. He tries to find time to read  and to sign letters sent in his name, and would never sign a  memorandum without reading it. There is discussion of the  day’s appointments.
Before the official visitors begin to arrive, at 10 o’clock, the most urgent files receive attention. The Press Secretary will  have gone through Nigeria’s score of daily newspapers and  other publications, and will mention to the President anything  which seems to him to require attention. The Chief of Protocol  will discuss the day’s arrangements. The speech-writer gets  his instructions – but the President does most of his own  drafting and the writer’s main job is to liaise with the ministry  or other body with whose activities a speech may be concerned, and to do research.
This small group and five others have the status of “Special  Assistants” to the President. Unlike the presidential “Special Advisers”, who have quasi-ministerial duties and whose
number and terms of service are decided by the NationalAssembly – although the President himself names them –  Special Assistants are purely personal appointees of the President. Most of his staff are civil servants and most of his work is done in association with them, particularly the present Secretary to the Government of the Federation, with ministers, or with Special Advisers. The personal staff, however, have a special place in the presidential constellation.
Mikail Prest is tall and slim, with an academic appearance.  When the President appointed him in 1979 he was 43. His father, the late Chief Arthur Prest, was an Action Group Minister in Sir Abubakar’s Cabinet with Shehu Shagari. He finally became a judge. The family comes from the Itsekiri people, that small but highly talented group whose capital is Warri, the Bendel State port lying between Lagos and Benin.
Mr Prest’s family has long been Christian, but he has become a Muslim. He is a lawyer and holds the almost ethereal qualification of a Diploma of the Institute of Air and Space Law. He came back to Nigeria to join Shehu Shagari’s election team, in which he made himself so useful that the President, who had previously not known him, felt that such loyalty and application would be valuable in State House.
Another member of the team who came to the President’s attention during his election campaign, for which the “manager” was Alhaji Umaru Dikko, who became Minister of Transport, was Charles Igoh, the Chief Press Secretary. Born in 1940, he was an experienced journalist, some of whose best work was as Sports Editor of the Daily Times. He has been a member of the staff of the National Sports Commission. An Idoma from Benue State, he is a graduate of the University of Lagos. He offered his services in 1979 as a press officer in the presidential campaign, and joined the State House staff in February, 1980.
Among officials very close to the President is the Chief of Protocol, whose job is little understood by those who suppose that it concerns only matters such as precedence on official occasions. In fact, the holder of this appointment, Alhaji Yusuf W. Sada, who comes from Katsina and was born in 1927, has many highly practical duties. He looks after the accommodation and arrangements for distinguished foreign visitors in government guest houses, etc., organises transport for the President and his entourage, helps to arrange all public occasions in which the President participates. He is also concerned with security matters.
Alhaji Yusuf has had long experience in the diplomatic service, which culminated in his appointment as Ambassador in Bonn. Surprisingly, however, he is by profession a radiographer, with a qualification from Bristol University; he also holds a certificate in public administration from Pakistan’s Administrative Staff College.
A Special Assistant with a qualification as unexpected is Alhaji Salihu Abubakar Tanko Yakasai. A Kano man born in 1926, he was a staunch supporter of Malam Aminu Kano’s NEPU. He received a Diploma in Political Science from the Wilhelm Pieck Youth High Institute of East Germany in 1962.
In 1979, however, he decided that the future belonged to NPN rather than NEPU, now reincarnated as PRP. NPN, in fact, did badly in Kano, but he was appointed one of the President’s Special Assistants for National Assembly Liaison in Lagos.
A colleague of Alhaji Tanko, who is also concerned with the President’s liaison with the National Assembly, is Mr Archibong  Archibon-Omon. A Calabar man, he is by profession a town planner.
– As Special Assistant on Information there is Mr John ‘Nnia Ugwu Nwodo, a young Ibo with an economics degree.
Another Special Assistant with practical, if not academic, experience of economics is Alhaji Mohammed Buba Ahmed, whose concern is Nigeria’s multifarious statutory boards.
Before leaving the civil service he had become Senior Customs Collector. Later he was chairman of the federally-owned Superphosphates Fertiliser Company in Kaduna – he himself comes from Plateau State.
Finally among the Special Assistants are two late-comers. Abiodun Aloba, a Benin man born in 1921, was once, as the Sunday Times’s columnist “Ebenezer Williams”, not only the best-known journalist but perhaps the best-known man in Nigeria. He went off the boil and took various administrative jobs in journalism. Now, still a master of English (he avoided  the handicap of a degree) and as sardonic as ever, he is the President’s official speech-writer. The invitation to take this appointment surprised him as much as it did everybody else.
The latest Special Assistant, but certainly not the least, is Alhaji Osman Ahmadu-Suka. A large and impressive man, he has been brought in by the President to be head of the new, cumbersomely named, “Department for Monitoring  Execution of Government Policies and Programmes”. Alhaji Osman, a Sokoto man born in 1926, is one of the few northern Nigerians to have been educated at the famous Achimota School in Ghana, where he spent over ten years. He now has two sons at Harrow. He attended universities in Britain and the US, and after teaching experience joined the Foreign Service, finally becoming Nigeria’s ambassador in the Netherlands.
His new department’s obvious ‘problem is staff with the right experience; for theirs is a delicate as well as a skilled task. They are expected to examine the routine work of ministries and government bodies as well as specific projects and policies.     .
Their head was soon able to identify from personal experience one of the routine obstacles to efficiency in the government. The department was allocated premises of its own off Awolowo Road, not far from State House; but financial indiscipline among the contractors delayed completion of these premises for over six months.
On the President’s instructions plans for this new department were drawn up by Alhaji Shehu Musa, Secretary to the Government, since it will complement the work of his own office in the general supervision of federal government activities. As the National Assembly might have questioned the appointment of another Special Adviser, the President, who regarded the job as urgent, decided that the head of the new department should be a Special Assistant; and, although he is now a politician, Alhaji Osman retains the personal rank of ambassador.
The President has also appointed a Special Assistant as their own Head of State or government. Nigerian state governors, official delegations, Nigerian ambassadors, traditional rulers, members of Commissions of Enquiry, etc., must all be fitted in.
The routine of a State House day may be broken by the need for the President to attend an international gathering in Lagos – these have ranged from the Commonwealth Law Conference to the African Football Confederation. He attends the National Assembly in person to deliver his budget message.
Committees and members of the National Assembly, and leaders of all its parties, are also constant visitors at State House. The President holds an occasional news conference, although he does not seek personal publicity and deprecates the habit of Nigerian newspapers of using his photograph on all possible occasions, and of radio or TV news programmes “leading” with an item about him when items which in his view are far more important should be given precedence. The Vice-President gives a regular monthly briefing for “media executives.”
The President regularly meets his Special Advisers. Of these Alhaji Yahaya Dikko, whose concern is petroleum and energy, is in a position analogous to that of a minister. His main concern is the giant Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation; he is an electrical engineer and was the first Nigerian General Manager of the National Electric Power Authority. In effect the President is Minister for Petroleum and Energy, with Alhaji Yahaya as Permanent Secretary. A Special Adviser who was in a similar position’ is Chief Olufunmi Adebanjo, whose concern is information. There is a complete Department of Information, but only recently was a Minister appointed. A Yoruba, Chief Adebanjo is an experienced journalist and worked in the Washington Embassy. He, too, was prominent during the election campaign.
Three Special Advisers are concerned with economic and financial affairs. Chief Theophilus Akinyele, Director of the Budget as well as Special Adviser on Budget Affairs, comes from lbadan. He is a former academic administrator and senior civil servant. Professor Chukwuma Edozien, who has an American economics doctorate and is an lbo, is one of the two Special Advisers on economic affairs. The other, Dr Joseph S. Odama, who comes from Kwara State, also has an American doctorate, and is a former university teacher.
There are two Special Advisers on Political Affairs, both Ibos. Professor Godwin Odenigwe is a lawyer, and holds an American Ph.D. Dr Chuba Okadigbo also has American degrees and is a former university professor. Thirty-eight when appointed in 1979, he is the youngest of the Special Advisers. The duties of these two are obviously the most difficult to define.
Only a few months older than Dr Okadigbo is Dr Olufemi Olaifa, an lbadan man with high qualifications in veterinary medicine and surgery from many universities, including Oslo.
His concern is statutory boards. There is, curiously, another “vet” among the advisers, Dr Bukar Shaibu, who comes from Borno, the great cattle state. He is MRCVS Liverpool and has had considerable experience in the regional and federal ministries. His concern is now national security, but the President has called on him to be chairman of the “Green Revolution”  Committee. Finally the veteran lbo politician and former federal NCNC minister, Dr Kingsley Mbadiwe, is Special Adviser on National Assembly Liaison. In view of the absence of an NPN majority in either house, some think that this task may call for more diplomacy than the 65-year old politician can command.
In a position similar to that of an adviser is the Minister of Police Affairs. The ministry in fact forms part of the Office of the President, who is ultimately responsible for all police matters.
In view of the key position steel holds in the Government’s programme for industrial development, the Steel Development Department, headed by a Minister, Mallam Mamman Ali Makele, an economics graduate from Kwara State, is also in the President’s Office. Similarly the Ministry for Capital Territory Development (Abuja), is in effect part of the President’s Office. In both of these subjects the President takes a deep personal interest. Dr Alex Ekwueme, the Vice-President, both carries more responsibility than personages in such a position often do, and has become closer to the President than might have been expected, since before he joined the presidential election “ticket” the two were unacquainted. He is deputy chairman of the Council of State, the National Defence Council and the National Security Council. He is chairman of the National Economic Council, on which all state governors sit, together with the Governor of the Central Bank, and which has important functions concerning the Development Plan. He has been given special responsibility for statutory corporations, and has made official missions abroad on the President’s behalf.
At about 10 o’clock each day Shehu Shagari likes, if possible, to hold a short discussion with Dr. Ekwueme. If there is no formal luncheon, for example with Nigerian newspaper executives, he has a simple and informal meal at about 2 0’ clock, and says prayers again. Then he tries each day to spend some time with his family – he has two wives and of his fifteen children some are still at school (I describe his family in Chapter 13).
Later in the afternoon he returns to the office to deal once more, with the help of his presidential assistants, with files. At about 4 o’clock he likes to return to his house. Again there are prayers in his private mosque, and a bath. For the rest of the day, unless he has to go out for an official engagement, he likes to receive visitors privately, or to read and to watch television. There is usually, however, little respite.
The NPN “national caucus” for example, meets him each Monday evening when he is in Lagos. Some of his friends suggest that these meetings take too much of the President’s time, particularly as he is constantly holding discussions with Senators and members of the House of Representatives from his own and other parties. He maintains, however, that they help to keep him in touch with the party outside the legislature. State NPN caucuses also bring some of their problems to him. Nor does he neglect his old friends when they visit Lagos, or delegations of ordinary citizens. Many visitors he himself escorts to the door of his house. Such is his stamina that his informal talks may carry on until two in the morning.
There are, too, formal dinners, although nobody supposes that this abstemious man finds much joy in these; he prefers a quiet dinner with friends.
To be continued next week