‘Corruption-free Ministers’: Is Buhari Victim Of His Own High Standards?

Buhari

Barely 10 days to the end of September, the long awaited ministerial list from President Muhammadu Buhari who promised to make the list available this month may not happen after all until perhaps October or even beyond that.

The president had promised in far-away Ghana at a recent state  visit to that West African nation that his cabinet would be constituted by September and that it would be made up of technocrats who are 'corruption free'. This was expected from a president who was elected on the strength of his personal integrity.

 When he also visited United States recently, President Barack Obama described him as a man of integrity who is committed to turning around the fortune of the country. Similarly when Buhari recently made public his asset declaration which he was not compelled by law to do, the very influential Washington Post Newspaper after examining the totality of his assets so far made public declared that Buhari is probably 'the least corrupt' African president today.

With this high profile integrity of the president acknowledged locally and internationally the president appears to have become hostage to his own high standards on personal integrity which he expected his ministers to have. The words out there is that the president is finding it hard to get the 36 Nigerians (1999 Constitution as amended recommended that the president shall appoint his ministers from each of the 36 states of the federation), with absolute integrity who can be made ministers. This also shows that like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that Nigerians voted out of power because of corruption in the 2015 general election, the president’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is also lacking in integrity and may be as corrupt too as the president is finding it difficult to find 36 'clean' APC technocrats to be made ministers across the country. The situation is not helped by the infighting in the APC occasioned by the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as senate president against the wishes of the APC leadership and President Buhari. Today Saraki who is supposed to receive the president's ministerial list on behalf of the Senate is fighting perhaps the biggest political battle of his life over alleged improper declaration of assets in 2003 for which he has been dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) in Abuja. With Saraki fighting battles in all fronts especially over corruption and the president finding it difficult to get corrupt free Nigerians to be made ministers, Nigerians may have to wait for a little longer before the president finds APC members or sympathisers good enough to be ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And when eventually Buhari finds his 'clean' ministers, the ministers would probably be the most scrutinised ministers ever for any trace of corruption in Nigeria's history.