The potential impact of Tinubu’s proposed ministry reforms

As President Bola Tinubu revealed the designations of his upcoming ministers last Wednesday, an immediate and unmistakable transformation emerged – ten ministries underwent a process of unbundling.

In this comprehensive assessment, Thepressng.com (TPN) aims to thoroughly examine the potential repercussions stemming from the division of ten prominent ministries, which had long remained tightly centralized over the course of several decades.

The primary concern at hand revolves around whether the deconstruction of these ministries, taking place at the culmination of President Tinubu’s four-year tenure, will yield positive or negative outcomes. This hinges on the question of whether Nigerian public servants, who have been known to disrupt well-crafted government policies, will handle this unbundling in a manner that preserves the integrity of these policies.

The unbundling gave birth to the listed ministries below:

1 .Marine and Blue Economy
2. Tourism
3. Art, Culture and the Creative Economy
4. Gas Resources
5. Steel Development
6. Finance and Coordinating Economy
7. Health and Social Welfare
8. Aviation and Aerospace Development
9. Youth Development
10. Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation

The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism would be used as a yardstick in properly examining what happened in the immediate past eight -year tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari.

For eight years, information, culture and tourism co-existed with just one permanent secretary. For this period the core ministry which was information was totally abandoned as it was considered not too juicy.

The then minister, a veteran journalist concentrated only on the juicy sides, culture and tourism and the core segment of the ministry suffered for eight years.

All the directors shifted base to only the juicy areas of the ministry as information was embedded only on the then minister. The Ministry was reduced to just issuing statements and press briefings.

Unbundling the ministry to a large extent is a beautiful development.

QUESTIONS BEGGING FOR ANSWERS:

*Will Federal Government redeploy permanent secretaries to the newly created ministries?

*Will civil servants who had written and passed promotion examinations and passed but remained on the queue for years be elevated to the next cadre?

*Is there going to be a mechanism to check these newly born ministries to see whether they are following the processes outlined for them to survive?

*Implementation of policies that are in most cases imported without necessarily checking whether they are environmentally friendly and others.

*Is there provision for adequate training of civil servants who are responsible to political appointees?

The above questions needed to be adequately addressed before Nigerians start seeing any ray of hope at the end of the tunnel.

Conclusively, the Public Service Regulatory Act on tenure has come to stay forever, definitely the top would soon be free and the top properly decongested and smarter minds at the bottom rung could take over.

Good a thing, decentralization is a global phenomenon which has gone a long way in making administration easier but it’s not the larger the number of ministries that eases governance and that’s what this new administration has not considered.

But then, appointing ministers is just a tiny side of the four-year journey of this administration. If it has plans to succeed, the raised questions demand an urgent answer or what happened in the Ministry of Information for eight years would be replicated as all ministries have juicy sides.