Chief Adeseye Ogunlewe, a former minister of works and Senate member has said on Wednesday, September 9, that President Muhammadu Buhari no longer has any excuse over the absence of ministers having made key appointments.
Urging the president to immediately swing into action, the former minister said that President Buhari’s government is already formed with those key positions and that he should go on to make his ministerial appointments, The Punch reports.
Ogunlewe who was a member of the Senate during former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s first tenure noted that the most important people in the government were the president, the Senate president, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the secretary to the government of the federation and the president’s chief of staff.
He said: “Buhari’s cabinet has already been formed. Any other person that comes now is a stranger and a mere visitor to the villa. The villa is the engine room of the nation in terms of policy formation and implementation. And these are the people that determine what will happen in Nigeria. The villa is the headquarters and who are the participants in the villa?
“The SGF and chief of staff are always with the president in the villa. Although the Senate president and the speaker don’t live in the villa, they are more important than the vice-president. The vice-president does only what the president tells him to do. He has no staff of his own. His staff are the staff of the president.
“So, the government is already formed and they have already been holding meetings. Even though the All Progressives Congress claims that the president still has thousands of other appointments to make, it is these people that will determine who will be appointed.
“It is the SGF that will write letters of appointment to appointees. As a minister, if you want to present a memo to the Federal Executive Council, you must go through the SGF. It is the SGF that will then forward the memo to the president. It is what he wants the president to see that he will see.”
Ogunlewe added that Buhari was not the kind of person that changes his mind easily and that those Nigerians who have been crying foul on the issue of marginalisation should stop distracting the government.
Explaining further, Ogunlewe noted that the president has the prerogative to appoint those he trusts.
The former senator said that even though there are no minister that the president can set up a committee to assist him in policy formulation.
He added that the permanent secretaries will brief him of developments in each ministry and that it is not new. Ogunlewe further gave an example of Chief Obafemi Awolowo that held direct meetings with permanent secretaries who are the accounting officers of each ministry.
“So, those saying Buhari was given handover notes late are just wasting time. The permanent secretaries can brief the President on the state of affairs in all the ministries,” he said.
The former minister added that Buhari could run the country with permanent secretaries and other principal officers in the villa without problems.
Meanwhile, President Buhari has reportedlysubmitted a list of 36 ministerial nominees to the Department of State Services (DSS) for screening.
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