On September 10, 2013, the president sacked nine of his ministers while the minister of state for health, Dr Muhammed Ali Pate, had voluntarily quit the Jonathan team. Prior to this, President Jonathan had fired the minister of youth affairs, Inuwa Abdulkadir, for his alleged poor handling of the election and affairs of the National Youth Council.
Pate left the government to take up an appointment with the Global Health Institute in the United States.
The ministers who were sacked in September are Dr Olugbenga Ashiru (foreign affairs), national planning’s Shamsudeen Usman, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai (education), Hajiya Hadiza Mailafia (environment) and Ms Amal Pepple (housing).
Others are Prof. Ita Bassey Ewah (science and technology), minister of state for power Hajiya Zainab Kuchi, her counterpart in the Ministry of Defence, Erelu Olusola Obada, and minister agriculture Bukar Tijjani.
LEADERSHIP Sunday learnt that President Jonathan will not name new ministers until the crisis rocking the PDP is over. The decision by the president, a top presidency official said, “is for political expediency and to avoid a case of replacing six with a half a dozen”.
The source said, “Do you think President Jonathan is not aware that there are 11 vacancies in the FEC? He is aware of this but, let me tell you, until the problem facing the PDP is resolved, new ministers might not be named.”
Most of the sacked ministers were believed to have paid for the sins of their political godfathers who staged a walk-out on the president and the PDP leadership at the last special convention of the party.
The crisis has since snowballed into a “political earthquake” with the aggrieved members forming the nPDP in alliance with five PDP governors who defected to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
Sources said Kuchi from Niger State was removed to balance the political calculation in her home state, while Prof Ewah fell out of favour with the governor of Cross Rivers State, Liyel Imoke.
Three months after the ministers were sacked, President Jonathan has been unable to replace them because he does not want to pick a minister loyal to his foe, it was gathered.
Their offices are now on the watch of some serving ministers tagged “supervising ministers”. The minister of information, Labaran Maku, is in charge of defence while Nyesom Wike oversees the education ministry.
“It will be difficult to know who is on the side of the president and who is not for now and once names of the would-be ministers are sent to the Senate, it will not sound well to recall them if it is discovered that some of them are more of the opposition than of the PDP,” said the presidency source. “With the situation the PDP is in, it is difficult to know who is with President Jonathan and who is not.
The crisis has gone beyond the governors who are causing confusion because of their ambition and if any of their surrogates is named as a minister, and his name is sent to the National Assembly, withdrawing it would not be good enough for the government.”
The source continued: “The fact that former members of FEC are yet to be replaced does not mean government is not going; there is a permanent secretary in each of the ministries affected who runs the ministry.
Ministers are just the political heads; it is the permanent secretary that is the accounting officer. But be that as it may, new faces would join the FEC in the first quarter of next year.”
When asked why a sensitive ministry as defence has not been given a substantive minister since the removal of Dr Bello Haliru Mohammed, the official said: “Dr Mohammed and the late national security adviser (NSA) Gen. Andrew Azazi were sacrificed to please some forces who were saying the counter-terrorism war was not strong enough.
And I still need to remind you that whenever Nigeria faces a security challenge, the president or the head of state is always in charge of the defence portfolio. So, what is happening is not strange at all.”
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