Tinubu’s Ministers need to minister By Prince Charles Dickson PhD

A friend and I were texting today about how our mornings had not started well. She had lost her keys and subsequently missed both a dentist appointment and a work meeting. I had placed an essential form in a “safe place” and then could not remember where I put it. The longer my friend and I kept looking for these items, the more flustered and upset we became.

As time dragged on, my friend’s worries grew. What if she did not find her keys? Had she thrown them away by accident? Getting a replacement key fob is not easy or cheap. My concerns mounted as well. While requesting a new form would not set me back in money, it sure would set me back in time. I just knew I would have to call customer service and be passed from person to person to request what was needed. I dreaded the hassle it would be. Instead of stopping a moment to collect the proper perspective——we both swirled through our homes like raging storms.

I want to see the new ministers do well, but there is little they will be able to do because even their emergence has been greeted by our usual pessimism, not because we don’t believe in them, but because the process itself is a lost cause, a missing in action methodology.

The ministers will not minster well because if you have watched the drama between the House of Representatives AdHoc Committee investigating job racketeering in ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), and what has happened at the Federal Character Commission FCC despite all that swearing with various hold books simply points to the fact that while the big thieves do theirs, the civil servant who steals public funds will not stop because there are new ministers.

There is a new Acting Inspector General, he may want to do things differently but it will still be the same difference, call policemen off the roads, establish call lines which by the way are not toll-free, and a few rhetoric but personnel will still collect bribe at the detriment of national security, and thus whoever is head of police affairs cannot minister much.

There is not much we can do when a nation that saw the creation, birth, and production of an “the damsel from the east and her high JAMB score”, and how the matter has died, fact is that the Minister for Education cannot do much especially not only as teachers who organizes special examination centres litter around there will remain those at Unical that turn faculties into brothels.

Will the Minister deal with parents who pay for exam malpractice for their children, that pay teachers to have their kids get prizes they do not deserve on the speech and prize giving day.

We want to see change whether by renewed hope or the illusionary from consumption to production, whoever is minster has to deal with citizens who shunt queues and disobey traffic rules, those that refuse to get valid papers for their vehicles and will shout about how some ministers will embezzle Public Funds.

As I write this, several ministers already have been hosted to all kinds and manners of receptions, with some even being celebrated with full paid page adverts and when they start to act to script, they will be no different from the boss who gives unmerited favours to his subordinates on the basis of religion, tribe, political, and other social affiliations.

Mr. Tinubu has taken a whole lot of stick, and like leaders the bulk stop on his table, but like the Ministers they will be no different from the goods sellers who hoard goods to create deliberate scarcity.

The new Attorney -General and charge de affaire for Justice will have new ideas and like his counterpart in health,  judges and lawyers will make ways for criminals to escape facing the wrath of the law; same way that doctors will refer their patients to private facilities for personal gains. And engineers will construct below agreed standard facilities for personal gains, the Minister will look away because of because. It is who we are!

The Central Bank and preliminary findings from its audit report show dat wahala dey with bankers that collect brokerage that has been inflated, inside trading from stock brokers are fraudsters benefit because of insider information. The youths who believe shady and fraudulent acts are ways of hustling will test the minister for finance and our economy will be tested, will he be able to minister?

We are all guilty, whether it is the cleric that calls for fasting without fasting, if the government fails, other things will fail automatically, incidentally no one is called government, we are government. The new ministers are products of our environment. We need to figure out what we lost, where we lost it.

Thankfully, I am happy to report that we both found our missing items. My friend’s keys were in a closet on the top shelf. She had looked in that closet but in a raincoat pocket. She never thought to look up at the shelf. I had misfiled my form, and in my agitation and haste, must have flipped right on past it while looking. I was relieved but not proud at how easily I lost my cool. And if I am honest, this is not an isolated case. How many times have I let minor inconveniences and agitations rob me of my peace? Yes, today we misplaced important items. Tomorrow it may be traffic. We may spill something the next day and make a huge sticky mess. 

Sometimes, our peace is jeopardized not by something that happens but by worries and negative thoughts, the problem with Nigeria is that we have all by default become negative people, by our inherent negative actions and so no matter the best of intentions the new ministers won’t minister, if we don’t change, except by some magic and miracle—May Nigeria win