It is no longer news that 26 Chief Executive Officers of key Federal Government agencies have been given the red card by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, and that more than 30 will join the latest list of “common men” anytime soon. What may be news is that the jostling for the vacant positions, which began about one month before the first set were sacked on Monday, has assumed an alarming dimension. The homes of
those who are believed to have the ears of, first, the ministers, and then the President, have been practically turned to tourist centres, while the ministers, who have been accused of not hitting the ground running, now have super distractions, which the Nigerian economy, as it stands, may not be able to enduer.
Resumes of different weights are currently flying around as benefactors of the ruling All Progressives Congress warm up to claim long overdue political IOUs. I even gather that some prospective candidates, who think they have good chances, having, perhaps, been instrumental to the inclusion of one DG or the other in the dreaded list, have since relocated to the Federal Capital Territory. Some key officials in the Villa, I’m told, have also started posing like messiahs, who can facilitate the journey of the aspiring DGs to the Promised Land. This is not unusual, being the norm in a country where ‘connections’ most times trump merit in critical Executive decisions. However,
this particular situation appears crazy because of the unprecedented scale of exit, which if not properly handled, may open up the economy for more shocks that will eventually manifest in the form of corruption and various forms of inefficiencies in a matter of months.
The truth is that when people receive news of stealing in monstrous scales here, sacking at alarming rates there, without the kind of macro-economic coordination needed to stabilise the economy in the face of what informed Nigerians have termed policy confusion, the masses, especially the poor majority will bear the brunt.
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