When should a minister resign?

Many countries follow the same principle. In Romania, the minister of interior, Vasile Blaga, resigned a week after 5,000 police officers went on a one-day strike in protest over a 25% pay cut. Although Blaga described the strike as illegal, he never-the-less resigned as a gesture of honour.  In India, two political leaders, including the […]

Many countries follow the same principle. In Romania, the minister of interior, Vasile Blaga, resigned a week after 5,000 police officers went on a one-day strike in protest over a 25% pay cut. Although Blaga described the strike as illegal, he never-the-less resigned as a gesture of honour.  In India, two political leaders, including the Infrastructure Minister resigned after nearly two weeks of strike action by coal miners and health workers. In Ghana, Dr. George Yankey, the minister of health and Amadu Siedu, minister of state at the presidency resigned following bribery allegations against them. Ghana’s president did not only accept the resignations, he mandated the country’s anti-corruption agency to investigate the matter.

None of these examples are easy to find in Nigeria. Here, let us recall the interesting case, a few years back, when our Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) alleged that the then Nigerian minister of state for health, Alhaji Suleiman Bello, conferred a corrupt advantage upon himself when he was Resident Electoral Commissioner for Adamawa State. He was alleged to have unlawfully solicited from Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State about N11, 245,000 as ‘hardship allowance’.  Whereas it is obvious that the minister could not have managed the health sector well while facing those charges, he did not resign because that is not how our system works.  Our own convention is that ministers resign only in pursuit of higher political positions like seeking a seat in the senate or to contest governorship elections in their states. In other words, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility is absent in our clime. Thus, until our current minister of education leaves the system by opting for some higher job, no one will be held accountable for the current situation in our universities. It means we are stuck with their frequent closures occasioned by incessant strike actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). The bone of contention is the implementation of a 2year-old agreement reached by government and ASUU- a subject which the government as represented by the minister of education has not successfully handled.  Earlier, this year, government ignored a public plea by ASUU for the implementation of the agreement so as to avert a strike action. It was only after the union had embarked on a warning strike in September that government hurriedly signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).  For the next two months, government did nothing until two days after ASUU declared a full strike action.

From the findings of the erudite Farouk Lawan, Chairman House committee on education who was part of the last agreement, government is to blame. At the end of a briefing by the National Universities Commission on the subject, he opined that “the momentum by the executive was lost’ in the last two months.  According to Farouk, two private member bills which are now receiving attention had to be introduced when it became obvious that the much awaited executive bill on the ASUU subject was not forthcoming,. The situation in the senate was more illuminating. There, the minister of education, Prof Rufai who explained that the implementation of eight of ASUU’s demands was being delayed because of the processes they had to pass through was made to face what could go for a “Point Blank” interrogation. The Education Committee Chairman, Senator Uche Chukwumerije himself a veteran journalist put the issue in perspective with the following questions: “You keep saying processes and processes… are they made in the moon or Jupiter or where else? Are you not the people that created these processes? Or is it that you are waiting for another court action before you implement an agreement both parties willingly singed almost three years ago? Why can’t you speed up the processes and save us another agony of going on strike? It took a judgment by the Supreme Court before the  matter on the illegal sack of the University of Ilorin teachers could be implemented; do you also want us to wait for another four years on this?”

For us, it appears that government has for long contrived a disingenuous agreement hence the minister of education has not been able to differentiate between an agreement and a negotiation making it seem as if government is into a game with ASUU known as “negotiation without end”. In truth however, many people including this writer have never supported ASUU’s demands, but this is not the time for such rationalization. Of course, this is not the time to generate bad publicity for ASUU by announcing huge sums of money which it is allegedly demanding because if the demand was unreasonable, government should not have entered into the agreement. This is also not the time to admonish ASUU to put the interest of the nation and that of students first as insincerity on the part of government is not in any person’s interest. Considering the pedigree of experts like Professor Ayo Banjo as well as Messrs Philip Asiodu and Gamaliel Onosode who often represented government in the negotiations, ASUU could not have hypnotized government to sign the agreements. Having signed, this is not the time for recrimination.

Rather it is time to evoke the principle of ministerial responsibility which presupposes that a cabinet minister bears the ultimate responsibility for the actions of his ministry. Therefore, since the minister is expected to take the glory for the ministry’s achievements as well as the blame when things go wrong, this is the appropriate time for our education minister to resign.  Nigeria’s Under-23 coach, Augustine Eguavoen whose team failed to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics has just honourably done so. The point to be made is that to honourably quit is not a sign of guilt, rather it is a sign of accepting responsibility as a leader.