Why do Nigerian
Presidents so often fail to make quality appointments? Unlike beauty, quality
does not lie in the eyes of the beholder.
Every new president promises to
nominate talented, qualified people to fill into positions in their government.
Yet, they all make more than a few appointments that do not satisfy the call
for “able, creative, and experienced people,” who will serve as “the most
important ingredient in the recipe for good government.” Most of the names I
have seen on President Buhari’s ministerial list do not represent the best and
brightest Nigeria has to offer.
The President might be
having problem with the issue of trust, thereby looking to appoint only those
that will stay loyal to him, but we also want him to look beyond loyalty. No
matter how loyal appointees are to the President, they also need to know what
to do and how to do it once they get the jobs. The ability to manage, design,
and effectively carry out new programmes, implement key legislation, and
deliver services should be prominent—indeed primary—criteria for choosing
potential appointees.
Those who have cited
loyalty as the reason why mostly northerners have been appointed so far into
the President’s cabinet should note that there are no systematic data on how
loyalty results in effective performance in governance. I can also argue that loyalty
or not, political appointees are often not truly loyal to the President because
they also have personal agendas, thereby having multiple loyalties.
Even where appointees
are responsive to presidential agendas, some tend to lack the managerial skills
to enact those agendas successfully. Most of the names I see on this list are
political lobbyists, presidential campaign workers, and trusted aides to
political godfathers. Some may have substantial policy expertise, but almost
all are essentially soloists, not team players.
It is worrisome that in
Nigeria, when it comes to selecting people for the executive arm of the
government, we tend to abandon professional standards. The professional
standards we do observe are limited to technical and programme expertise. The
ability to manage, design, and effectively carry out new programmes, implement
key legislation, and deliver services has never been prominent criteria for
evaluating potential political appointees in this country. Would any large
corporation place at the head of its major operating division a person with no
experience in managing funds or supervising people? What enterprise would fill
every senior management position with a person with little or no industry
experience? Who would accept the mindless notion that any loyal or
good-spirited individual can run a government agency?
An appointee’s success
in changing the behaviour of a ministry is related not only to their loyalty to
the president and commitment to his policies, but also to their managerial
skills and experience, their personalities, and their plans for achieving
goals. While the environment of a ministry may be outside a President’s
control, appointing skillful and experienced ministers with appropriate
personalities and designs for achieving goals is not. The President should take
full advantage of that opportunity.
You can say that
conventional wisdom demands that the President considers personal loyalty and
commitment to his programmes in selecting candidates for positions in his
government, but you should also consider that the kind of ministers or
political appointees we have had over the years shows that loyalty has never
helped any Nigerian President achieve his goals.
And whether or not the
President appoints political opponents in his cabinet or not, the issue is that
quality matters. The greater the administrative challenge, the more
sophisticated the design needed to exploit it, and the greater the premium on
analytical ability, managerial and political skills, and personality—on those
skills that bring out the best in a government.
- Etcetera
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