Re-jigging Agency Heads

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, so far, has demonstrated the political will and determination to take those tough decisions that are required to nudge the nation in the right direction. Some of these are the removal of the fuel subsidy, which most Nigerians and policy makers believe was a cog in the nation’s economic wheel and could no longer be sustainable, the unification of the exchange rates that had led to distortions in the financial system and enriching, in the process, a handful of individuals at the expense of hardworking Nigerians.

 What has gotten fewer public accolades is the dissolution of governing boards of government agencies three weeks into his administration. This was even as the reception of the news was expected and considered as nothing out of the ordinary.  

 Part of the directive of the president was that Chief Executive Officers of the parastatals, agencies, institutions, and government-owned companies should refer matters requiring the attention of their boards to the President through the Permanent Secretaries of their respective supervisory ministries and offices.

 But the reality, in our view, is that governing boards have no real powers to execute the president’s mandate. The real driving force behind any government is the heads of agencies, who can make or break the government; particularly if they don’t share the vision of the incumbent president.

 And therein lies the challenge facing President Tinubu. What to do with heads of agencies who have not lived up to expectations, who are square pegs on round holes or are simply appointed based on principles that have nothing to do with competence. Another snag is the practice of letting agency heads serve out their term because the statute books demand so even in circumstances where this category of political appointees of a previous government have proved, over time, not to be good enough to bring about the anticipated good governance all crave for in the new dispensation.

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 The intriguing aspect, in our opinion, is that most of them were and still have to be approved by the Senate before taking office. By Nigerian law, these tenured political appointments refer to heads of agencies of board who can only be removed by the legislature. And in certain cases, like the governor and deputy governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria, they can only be removed by a two-third majority of the Senate.

 The whole point making it difficult to remove the occupants of these offices unless through resignation or a vote in the Senate is to protect the institutions, considered strategic, from political interference. So, the question has always arisen on whether the president or a governor can simply sack an agency head that was approved by the Senate or state Assembly.

 Actually, the law is often quoted on how they can be removed from office, which is usually through a vote in the Senate, resignation or serving out the term. While this is the position of the law, it is also widely accepted that in a democracy, every appointed official in the executive arm of government serves at the pleasure of the president. And there is precedent for this both locally and internationally.

 In April 2010, then Acting President Goodluck Jonathan sacked Prof Maurice Iwu as INEC chairman. Even though Iwu had only a month left in office, he was unceremoniously removed. Jonathan sacked other agency heads that provoked public debate. Similar debates have taken place in the United States of America. The most recent was the sacking of Andrew Saul, a Donald Trump appointed head of Social Security Administration by President Joseph Biden.

 But maybe the most significant was the sacking of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey by Donald Trump in May 2017 even though Comey had a ten-year fixed term and by law, could only be removed by the Senate. In 1993, US President Bill Clinton also sacked the FBI Director, William Session who had refused to resign despite repeated requests from the presidency to do so.

 So far, the only agency heads that Tinubu has ‘technically sacked’ are the Governor of Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele and the Chairman of EFCC, Abdul Rasheed Bawa. We are, however, persuaded by the exigencies of the time to suggest that the President starts on a clean slate. By implication, that would entail reviewing appointments of agency heads and the performance of those that have been in office for some time and still have more than one year to go. The president should know that time is ticking and he only has three years, 10 months and two weeks left.

 It is becoming obvious, in our opinion, that he will be constrained by the ever-prevalent political consideration. But even at that, national interest demands that he performs the needful. Nothing less is expected of him given the crushing pressure from the populace who wants things done and fast.