By Baron Ike
President Muhammadu Buhari has rapped up his plan to sack some of his cabinet members moment soon after his return from the United Kingdom for medical checks.
Buhari took a 10-day vacation last week to rest and possibly attend to his health matters.
But he was not only dealing with issues around his health. The President used the opportunity to compile list of some of his cabinet members and other key aides he will be saying goodbye to as soon he returns and implements his cabinet reshuffle, the first one since he assumed office in May 2015.
Many Nigerians think Buhari’s cabinet members are not doing well and ought to be changed.
Armadanews got it on good authority that Buhari was no longer ready to take all the blames from Nigerians for things not working according to plan. He was said to have lamented to some people recently that the Nigerian poor are going through very hard times which should not be so.
A very close aide of the President who confided in us said “the cabinet shake-up is absolute and inevitable,” and “we are hoping he will do so as soon as he returns from vacation and settles in for work.”
Nigerians have been complaining about the lack of performance by most of the president’s appointee which they say was worsening the economic recession the country started experiencing since the last quarter of last year.
For example, the power sector which the All Progressive Congress (APC) promised to confront head-on on assumption of power has become one of the weakest links in the efforts of government to revamp the economy as the electricity generation and distribution have continued to shrink without anyone offering a meaning explanation as to why.
Apart from the power sector, there are concerns over the performance of the ministries of labour and employment, trade and industry, agriculture, youths and sports, science and technology, among others.
Adamu Lanlehin, a retired civil servant in Lagos State advised the President to sack his entire cabinet, noting that “none of them was up to scratch.”
He regretted that former Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has disappointed Nigerians, saying that Buhari should separate the three ministries in the care of Fashola as “he does not have the capacity to perform with three ministries in his custody.”
Another aide of the president said Buhari himself was not pleased with the attitude of some of his close aides, particularly those of them named in one scandal or the other and may not spare them.
Though the President’s aide regretted that age was telling on his principal so much, he was of the believe that if the right people are put in the right positions things may begin to improve sooner than anticipated.