As the Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency marches unsteadily to its first 100 days in office, retired Permanent Secretary and pioneer Director General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Dr. Goke Adegoroye, has called for a rejig of the bureaucracy within the State House to arrest the foundering administration from ‘losing it’ and work to actualize its ‘Renewed Hope’ mandate.
This is especially coming against the backlash of biting implications of several economic policies carried out by new administration, such as the petrol subsidy removal and floating of the naira, amid strident opposition to the bloated record-high 45-man cabinet recently inaugurated and President Tinubu’s stance as chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to the coup in neighbouring Niger Republic.
In a piece sent to The Guardian and titled: ‘Too Early To Say We Are Losing It: But Can The Bureaucracy Come To The Rescue?’, Adegoroye noted the worrisome trend of despondency from many of the President’s avid supporters and canvassers, who have long replaced the euphoria of the first few weeks of the Tinubu administration with dampened hopes, necessitating the refrain. “We are losing it”!
He said: “While acknowledging the challenge of the Niger Coup to his administration at this early stage of his presidency, many seem worried by two main issues, namely: Media posts alleging payment of huge sums of money to key individuals around the President to influence appointment into political offices and/or facilitate meetings with the President; and the new cabinet in terms of its size and composition. They point to the geo-political distribution of the portfolios as smacking of a reverse replay of what we accused the last President of, and the non-fulfillment of the promise publicly made to Malam Nasir el Rufai as both not reflecting the true Yoruba spirit.
“Their ‘we are losing it’ outburst, is driven by a sense of collective responsibility and it exudes their true Yorubaness as Omoluabi who want fairness for all, the fear that their expectation of a magic wand by the President is becoming a mirage, and the urgency of a reassurance to the populace as an imperative. I am worried that the firm steps that are required to stem the tide might be gradually slipping away.”
He, therefore, offered a quick win marshal plan for the president to take, which is reconciling the large cabinet with the lean government promise of his manifesto and deploying the Bureaucracy to the rescue.
“This commitment concern of the populace is driven, not just by the consciousness of the usual ‘wait and see attitude’ of civil servants to any new administration and the sordid corruption cases in the print and social media by immediate past administration in which they were the drivers, but by a new apprehension from revelations of the last election results in the Federal Capital Territory, the seat of Government and the thoughts that many elements in the bureaucratic leadership are, at best, in a lukewarm disposition to the Bola Tinubu Administration pending the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT).
“Exhuming Dwight Waldo’s thesis of the dialectic of bureaucracy and democracy in governance, the new administration is bound to discover sooner than later that it is operating in a ‘professional environment wherein the art of pretense and, indeed, of wearing a mask has become the virtual prerequisites for a successful career.’ The million-dollar question therefore is, even when the court cases are over: How would the President be able to win over the leadership of the bureaucracy in terms of loyalty to his administration and the nation, given that the losing parties are bound to attempt to coalesce into a formidable force in the stark realization that four years is a long wait?” Other measures proffered by Adegoroye, who is the National Publicity Secretary of the Council of Retired Federal Permanent Secretaries (CORFEPS) include: How to make the new staff and visitors to the State House appreciate that the respective transitions of Bola Ahmed Tinubu from Asiwaju/Jagaban, the national leader of the topmost political party to Mr. President, and of Kashim Shettima from former Governor and Senator to Vice President, demand new sets of etiquettes and protocols; how to assist Femi Gbajabiamila to quickly transit from Speaker, the Number four in the Presidential hierarchy, to Chief of Staff to the President (CoS-P), a bureaucracy position that is devoid of his old paraphernalia of office but where he is compelled to meet up with the requirements of responding in quick time to the demands of the President; and how to identify the weaknesses and mistakes in the implementation of the organizational set up operated in the State House by the immediate past administration, and put in place new structures, procedures, guidelines and protocols to overcome/avoid them.
“In general, the finesse with which State House staff can handle visitors and foreign guests, and the quality of the Minutes/submission of the CoS-P on Memos and Correspondence to the President are a function of their mastery of State House etiquettes and protocols and how well the CoS-P and/or his staff understand the subject matter content of the Memos. Getting the right calibers of personnel to man the various desks in the State House and enhancing their capacity to discharge their responsibilities effectively and efficiently is also an imperative to make these happen.
“There is nothing in the media to suggest that the political appointees in this administration have been taken through any induction protocols. Rather, actions that depict the absence of it are what seem to be confounding us daily and this must be addressed in the early days of the administration.
“There is need to manage the crowd around the President to enable him perform State duties as efficiently as possible. That “we have done it in Lagos” has serious limitations and is prone to bouts of provincial champion syndrome. The “poster boys” of Lagos now in Abuja will soon find out that Lagos is not Abuja, and that Abuja is Nigeria. The Presidency is one. Accordingly, the President and the Vice President must be seen by all officers in the State House as the snug fit parts of the presidential governance apparatus.
“In this regard, the CoS-P must rise to the occasion in quelling all social media posts of unsmooth flow of communication between the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President. Just as the Permanent Secretary must be clear in his mind that as Accounting Officer of the State House, Mr President is his CEO and the one from whom he derives authority for every spend in the State House.
“Watching the NTA network news some 2 weeks ago on the visit of Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), my heart almost jumped into my mouth seeing that the protocol officer that was to position the President’s chair for him to sit, by guarding it firmly like a cricketer would cover his base, abandoned the chair midway to run to position Madam Ngozi’s chair for her. In the process, the President was inadvertently left to carefully situate his own chair for himself and sit (rather, he sank into the chair) with the officer scampering back to him! Where in the world has that ever been condoned?
“And then just last week, we watched the Ministers resume at their duty posts. I paid attention to the FCT, especially because it was my last duty post as Perm Sec. I was dumbfounded. It was the Minister all the way and in a tone that reminded me of the Military era. If the Minister of State was allowed to utter a word, we didn’t know. The Chief Press Officer of the Ministry already has his job cut out for him, as he has swung into action to walk back on the reportage of that first meeting in the media.”
[Guardian]