Ministers of Power, Defence, Education, and Agriculture and Rural Development have been rated poorly by Nigerians in the Citizens’ Delivery Tracker Apps of the Federal Government, according to Saturday PUNCH’s investigation.
In January 2024, the Federal Government had drafted no fewer than 140 officials to track and assess the performance of the federal ministries, departments, and agencies ahead of the first assessment exercise.
The officials joined the third technical retreat for Delivery Desk Officers of Federal Ministries on the Implementation of Presidential Priorities and Ministerial Deliverables in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, which began on 24 January 2024.
A senior official working closely with the Central Delivery Coordination Unit, headed by the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination, Ms. Hadiza Bala-Usman, revealed that the officers, who would conduct the assessment, were drawn from 35 Federal Government ministries, departments, and agencies.
“They are considering the modalities of the assessment, the key performance indicators and the reporting mechanisms”, the official told Saturday PUNCH.
In April, the Presidency unveiled a citizens’ feedback platform in a bid to get a ‘strong feedback loop between citizens and government’ on the eight priority areas of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Bala-Usman, who disclosed this at the Go-Live event of the CDT held in Abuja that month, said the creation of the application was informed by President Tinubu’s decision to assess his ministers and heads of agencies based on key performance indicators.
Bala-Usman had said the eight priority areas for the assessment of the ministers’ performances in the App include reforming the economy to deliver sustained inclusive growth, strengthening national security for peace and prosperity, boosting agriculture to achieve food security, and unlocking energy and natural resources for sustainable development.
Others are to enhance infrastructure and transportation as enablers of growth, focus on education, health, and social investment as essential pillars of development; accelerate diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing and innovation; and improve governance for effective service delivery.
Also, in an interview in October 2023, Bala-Usman provided extensive details about the application and its expected deliverables.
She had said: “We are going to deploy an application– a software– where citizens can report back on project-based deliverables that the Federal Government has committed to doing within the period to 2024”.
Detailing the process at the time, she said: “We sat with the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. We have worked effectively to define exactly the deliverables for each ministry.
“Those deliverables cascade to the agencies of government. So, for example, you have the sectoral deliverables for a sector in health, and everything that is contained within the value chain or the ecosystem within that sector will be contained within the deliverables.
“Those deliverables are translated into key performance indicators for the respective ministries. Once you have your key performance indicators, you’re able to clearly understand what your deliverables are over the period of the four years of the administration”.
An analysis of the feedback reports from the application made available to newsmen showed that some Nigerians rated the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu; Minister of Defence, Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar; Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman; and the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Mohammad Abubakar, very poorly, giving each of the ministers one mark out of a possible five.
As of the time of this report, out of the 253 respondents who rated the power minister, no fewer than 176, representing 69 per cent, gave him one mark; and 34 people representing 43 per cent out of 79 respondents also gave the defence minister one mark.
Similarly, no fewer than 22 people representing 47 per cent of 46 respondents gave the education minister one mark, while 32 respondents out of 98 gave the agriculture minister one mark, and 19 people scored him zero. The four ministers only got five marks each from 20, 7, 3, and 23 people in their categories respectively.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun; the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Barrister Nyesom Wike; and the Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi, got average marks from respondents on the application.
Out of the 101 people who rated the finance minister, 32 respondents gave him five marks, 13 gave him four marks, 17 gave him three marks, 14 gave him two marks, four gave him one mark, and 18 gave him zero.
For the FCT minister, 17 respondents out of 32 gave him five marks, while five people gave him four marks, and two people gave him three marks.
Similarly, 18 respondents out of 52 gave the works minister five marks, six people gave him four marks, five people gave him three marks, and 11 others scored him zero.
Other cabinet members rated average in the application report include the Minister for Solid Minerals, Dr. Dele Alake; Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola; and Minister of Sports Development, Senator Owan Enoh.
Other ministers assessed were the Minister of Labour and Employment, NHon. keiruka Onyejeocha; Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris; and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Prince Lateef Fagbemi.
In one of the feedback reports, nine respondents out of 21 gave the Minister of Solid Minerals one mark, while five people gave him five marks each. The information minister got one mark from seven respondents out of 18; the labour minister got five marks from eight out of 15 respondents, while 10 out of 27 respondents gave the marine and blue economy minister five marks each.
In the 14 feedback reports made available to newsmen and analysed, 774 respondents had participated in the ministers’ ratings as of the time of filing this report.
On the performance of the ministers, the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Barrister Debo Ologunagba, said the president should be held responsible for the performance of his cabinet members.
Ologunagba noted that the ministers were appointed by the president who also had the power to fire them, adding that the president should be blamed for their non-performance because they report to him.
Ologunagba, said: “A minister was not elected, it’s a president that was elected, and the buck stops at his desk as a President if he is effective. The President can fire and hire. It is his policy that the ministers are implementing”.
Ologunagba also noted that Nigerians could gauge the performance of the ministers by looking at how their lives had been impacted by the policy of the government since the President Tinubu administration came on board.
“Is life better in 2022 than now? That should be the measure. It is not about the ministers; rather, it is the policy of the government we should discuss. Do you feel more secure then than now? On the micro level, is a bag of rice cheaper then than now.
“These are about Nigerians’ problems and those are the indices you would use to judge. We are having security problems and insecurity has become the norm in Nigeria. The social life of people and the level of double taxation has worsened”, he said.
Meanwhile, a former Minister of Information and chieftain of the All Progressive Congress, Adebayo Shittu, said only President Tinubu could assess the ministers.
He added that the President had performed well with the structures that he had put in place.
According to him, only the President knew the ministers and could assess them.
He said, “The information we don’t have, Mr President has it. He appointed the ministers and would assess them. He is an experienced administrator, and he will examine all the data that he has, which he will use to judge.”
On its part, the Labour Party insisted that most of President Tinubu’s ministers had not delivered.
The party noted that the performance of the ministers had rather been woeful.
Speaking with The PUNCH, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Obiora Ifoh, was of the view that none of the ministers speaking at the ongoing ministerial press briefing in Abuja was able to present a tangible achievement within their one year in office.
Asked whether President Bola Tinubu should dismiss non-performing ministers, the LP spokesman explained that the decision should be left to the president. The President, he said, should decide whether to keep, reshuffle, or change the entire cabinet.
He stressed that there was a need for the government to promptly work on how to drive the economy and reduce the inflation rate.
He said, “With the little I saw this morning, it has been a woeful performance. From the presentation I watched yesterday, there is no single minister that has presented anything as what they’ve done in the last one. All I know is that the team he (President Tinubu) assembled has not done very well. Only the president can decide to keep, reshuffle, or change them but he needs to know that when the head is not right, the rest of the body will follow suit. The buck stops on his table. The policies he has brought in the last one year, which the ministers misinterpreted have not favoured Nigerians, especially in terms of the economy, social welfare, the judiciary, and security.
“They have not done well and besides that, this government has other things to check. We have four refineries and none is working till now. If they put the refineries in order, we will refine our products, and with the Dangote Refinery, we will not have the problem of spending our hard-earned money, and we will have more money in our foreign reserve. We won’t be paying so much for fuel and other items, because whether we like it or not, the high cost of petrol and other petroleum products is the reason a lot of things are expensive and why inflation has remained high.
“There is a need for this government to do a market index and see how to bring down the inflation for Nigerians. The demand for a new minimum wage is a result of where our currency is, at the rate of N1,500 to a dollar. We should expect the workers to earn more and the private sector to pay more, but if they can drive down the rate and bring it back to how they met it, I’m sure the request for N650,000 minimum wage will stop. The inflation rate has also jumped, so the managers of the economy have not done their work well”.
