Anxiety as Buhari gets set to sack 7 senior ministers, redeploy many early next year
There are palpable apprehensions along the corridors of the Presidential Villa as names of seven serving ministers adjudged as having performed bellow average within the year are penciled down for dropping come January next year. Earlier speculations said 10 ministers by later figure has reduced the number of senior ministers to be dropped to seven while junior ones to be affected are more than eight.
The names narrowly sighted by our source in Abuja show that two of the affected ministers, are the current Minister of Environment, Hajiya Amina Mohammed who is heading to the United Nations in July as the Deputy Secretary General of the UN and Minister of State for Internal Affairs, late Barr James Ocholi.
It would be recalled that since his sudden death in a ghastly motor accident along Abuja Lokoja highway, he has not been replaced even though Kogi State had remained silent over their mere exclusion from the Federal Executive Council meetings.
The other five ministers, (names with held) according to our source may have been aware of their possible removal as they have since this last quarter, been far away from the public even though they are still in office and attend Federal Executive Council meetings.
Business Hilights also gathered that the presidency is under serious pressure to split the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing with the aim of standing power alone and merging Works and Housing.
It was not clear if former Governor of Lagos State may still head any of the two, but there are indications that whereas some ministers would go, there will be injection of more technocrats than politicians as the government will be entering the last lap of its administration with the aim of delivering convincing performances that will drive votes for the party come 2019 elections.
Besides, several ministers who would be very lucky to be retained will be redeployed to give way for incoming technocrats.
Part of the key target of the sweeping changes is to fight recession from all fronts and make sure the economy bounces back before the inception of third quarter of 2017.
A source at the Villa hinted further that many of the ministers that developed the 2017 budget will not be part of the implementation team come next year, stressing that President Muhammadu Buhari only lately came to the realization that many of his first team lacked true thoughtful leadership and he is just managing them to get to a comfortable offloading point which the end of the year will provide.
The source also hinted that heads of some strategic financial departments may be eased away in a dramatic manner as part of efforts to fix the economy as soon as possible. The source summed up saying, “There will also be some redeployments at ministerial level not just sacks. You know that we have done well in fighting insurgency and the embarrassing reports on herdsmen, the war on corruption is being strengthened; but 2017 will be economy! Economy!! Economy!!!
