When the news of Governor Yahaya Bello’s cabinet dissolution broke out, there were widely held expectations that he was going to boot out his cabinet members to make space for people who can only mobilise him votes. It was a shot in the air that made even the crows travel beyond errands they were sent.
Did he dissolve his cabinet and compose a “politics cabinet” as expected in many quarters? Fortunately, he has shown not to have the desperation for re-election like many would think. The Governor by his decision has demonstrated his ability to see through the old system of electing prebendal politicians to hold state’s resources in a hijack as against competence to hold certain appointments.
Isn’t it also clever by half to dissolve a cabinet in an election year?
Besides the point that many people are expectant of the controversial output of the purported dissolution, I think many people missed the twist.
In the year of our lord 2017, towards the last quarter of the year, Governor Bello made a slight rejig of his cabinet by osmosis in redistribution of some of his cabinet heads to areas of strengths and balancing of his strategy towards the achievement of his political and economic mileage.
When the Governor tinkered his cabinet, a timeline of 3 months was given for many of the cabinet members to up their games or be shown the exit door. March 2018 makes exactly the deadline when he made the changes in December last year.
The expectations when the news broke out was to create an “appraisal” opportunity by his collective house In weighing contributions to assigned portfolios over the past 2 years. After an extensive deliberation, I would suspect that sensitive considerations were gauged to ascertain the level of their performance which might not have been bellow expectations. It is instructive to note that the media spin was to also gauge the reaction of the populace towards the appraisal process in order for onward considerations if a new cabinet or an addition is to be considered.
Meanwhile, investigation from the meeting as revealed by reliable internal sources indicates that, there was never a time the Statement to dissolve the cabinet was ever made by any of the principal officers. The closest that came to that was during the address of the Chief of Staff, Edward Onoja, when he cleverly said “ I have been “directed”, he never said by “who”, to tell all the 15 Commissioners and 21 Administrators to drop the Official Keys with the SSG”. He stopped there and continued his other line of Address. He never even said why keys where to dropped. Whether it was for replacement, routine maintenance by the supplier as agreed in the purchase agreement or for installation of tracking device.it beats ones imagination where the dissolution news came from according to interpretations.
The news that broke trended in a frenzy and has also awakened the sense of duty of the various cabinet members to remain focused, achieving and self tasking in order not to fall below the measuring indices of performance as we have seen over time that the Governor has the spine for huge decision making.
I leave you with these question again if you have doubts: Based on the political reality obtainable in Nigeria, who dissolves his cabinet in an election year?
Conclusively, Yahaya Bello’s resolve to maintain his cabinet is a reiteration that his appointees were not chosen for “electioneering” purpose, rather would they be dropped due to desperation to win elections at all costs.
– Promise Emmanuel (Kogi Rebel)
