Newscenter Media News The announcement of the creation of the Ministry of Livestock Development by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last Tuesday has underscored his belief in the balkanisation of seemingly large ministries to smaller ones with limited scope of operation. In this report, ONYEDIKA AGBEDO examines whether the model is aimed at enhancing the delivery of good governance to Nigerians by the administration or merely creating jobs for his cronies.
From every indication, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is deeply in love with operating smaller units of administration with regard to the size of federal ministries. He has, in fact, left no one in doubt that he believes in the doctrine of the more the merrier in this aspect of governance.
However, whether his adopted style of administration is delivering the level of good governance Nigerians yearn for is still a matter of conjecture. Hence his creation of an additional ministry – the Ministry of Livestock Development – last Tuesday is generating mixed reactions from Nigerians.
Since 1999 when democracy was restored in the country after 16 years of uninterrupted military rule, counting from 1983 when Gen. Muhammadu Buhari overthrew the admiration of the then president Shehu Shagari, Tinubu has earned himself the record of the president that has created the highest number of ministries and also appointed the highest number of ministers.
In 1999, former president Olusegun Obasanjo initially named 12 ministers but frequently reviewed his cabinet, which brought down the number of ministries and ministers to 27 and 40, respectively, before he left office in 2007.
The administration of his successor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, had a total of 27 ministries and appointed 39 ministers to oversee them. After Yar’Adua’s death in 2010, then vice president Goodluck Jonathan mounted the saddle and re-jigged the cabinet. In 2010, his administration had 29 ministries and appointed 30 ministers to oversee them.
However, after the 2011 election, Jonathan contracted the number of ministries to 25 and appointed 33 ministers to run them. Jonathan lost re-election in 2015, vacating the presidency for Gen. Muhammadu Buhari who won. It took six long months for Buhari to form his cabinet.By the time the list came out, what Nigerians saw was a further contraction of the ministries, citing the need to reduce the cost of governance. So, between 2015 and 2019, Buhari governed the country with 24 ministries that were supervised by 36 ministers.
However, following the presumed non-performance of some ministers because the scope of their assignment was perhaps too wide for them, Buhari expanded the number of ministries to 28 and appointed 44 ministers to run them after he was sworn in for a second term in 2019.
In August 2023, when President Tinubu announced his cabinet, it comprised 35 ministries to be run by 48 ministers. This was despite the clamour for a reduction in the cost of governance in the country.
Thus, not a few Nigerians were jolted last Tuesday when the President announced the creation of the Ministry of Livestock Development, apparently carved out from the existing Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. This will take the number of ministries in his administration to 36 when it takes off.
The president announced the creation of the new ministry when he inaugurated the Renewed Hope Livestock Reform Implementation Committee at the State House, Abuja.
Speaking to State House correspondents after last Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), defended the move, saying it was borne out of the need to enhance protein production and increase employment opportunities and government revenue.
He said the proposed ministry would focus on livestock development, allowing the Ministry of Agriculture to concentrate on other areas.
Fagbemi explained that the primary focus is what Nigerians and the government stand to gain in terms of revenue and other positive additions.
“The President formerly informed Council that a ministry known as Ministry of Livestock Development is being established and this is because he believes that the Ministry of Agriculture should be broken into two, one concentrating on livestock development because of what we stand to achieve in terms of protein, in terms of employment, in terms earnings for the government and how this one will rub off on the lives of an ordinary Nigerian citizen,” he said.
While acknowledging that creating a new ministry may seem counterintuitive to the government’s goal of reducing governance costs, Fagbemi emphasised that the benefits of this decision would outweigh the costs.
However, elder statesman and founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, thinks otherwise. To him, the carving out of the Ministry of Livestock Development from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security may throw up more challenges rather than positively impacting the lives of Nigerians.
His words: “The way I look at it is that whether it is Buhari’s own contraction of the ministries, though he later created more, one of which is the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, what I see that is the problem with our country is lack of competence. What Tinubu has done in the Ministry of Agriculture simply means that the ministry has overwhelmed the minister. It is very simple to deduce. The president has seen that the ministry has overwhelmed the minister and the way he thinks that ministry will give Nigerians what they want is to split it into bits and pieces. And that special ministry he set up for livestock has its own grave implications.
If you set up a ministry of livestock development and you probably put a northerner to oversee it (I don’t know who he will appoint), piggery is also livestock and we know that by the religion of the majority of those in the North, they don’t eat pork. In fact, they regard pig as something that defiles not to talk of marketing it. So, there is going to be a lot of protest as to the coverage of that particular ministry.”
Okorie alleged that some other ministries Tinubu created were carved out to reward some of those he feels were instrumental to his becoming president and not necessarily to improve the welfare of the masses.
“I don’t see how they are targeted at competence,” he noted. “So, incompetence has been the bane of this country. That is why we have not been able to achieve anything. And this creation of more and more ministries will only increase overhead cost and achieve little in terms of service delivery. That is the way I look at it. Buhari that tried to run the country with big ministries, what did he achieve? His government was one of the worst civilian administrations we have ever had since independence.
“So, something has to be done about competence. Part of it is that there must be devolution of power; give some of these responsibilities to states and local councils and they will be able to look after their immediate constituencies that are not too large. And what that also means is that revenue will be shared in a manner that those other arms of government will be funded. An octopus central government has proven to be a major disaster for Nigeria. And anybody that sits on top of the Nigerian presidency sees himself as a demigod and those who are around him dictate a lot of things. The impact of all of these on the whole country is negative.”
He urged the president to speed up the issue of devolution of power, saying that is what restructuring of the country means.
“States that are ready to deliver will progress and there will be healthy competition. Those who celebrate incompetence will be backward and everybody will see it.
“And when you are restructuring, put along with it an effective electoral reform that empowers the Nigerian electorate to decide their leaders, because leadership recruitment is also at the core of competence. And Nigerian voters are highly rational. They know who can serve them but their votes don’t count. Many of them are discouraged from coming out to cast votes they know will not count. So, if we do not embark on an effective electoral reform, which must be based on technology, and restructure the country both politically and economically, we will continue to wallow in this vicious cycle,” Okorie added.
A public affairs analyst, Mr. Jide Ojo, also believes that move was not well thought out. According to him, the president might have taken the step to appease certain forces within the country.
Ojo said: “I think the president is not thinking some of these things through and may be under some political pressure to just do things to appease certain interests and sections of the country. I do not see the rationale behind establishing the Ministry of Livestock Development. As you rightly pointed out, we have had calibration and bifurcation of existing ministries into two or three in this administration. Look at the Ministry of Information where we now have the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Tourism apart from the Ministry of Information and National Orientation. He split the Ministry of Solid Minerals into the Ministry of Steel Development and Ministry of Solid Minerals. He split the Ministry of Petroleum Resources into Gas and Oil and he is the overall supervising minister for the sector. So, invariably, we have three ministers in the oil and gas sector.”
Ojo stated that the creation of a Ministry of Livestock Development has been part of the agitations of Miyetti Allah, saying he was not sure it would solve the problem of herders/farmers clashes in the country as being touted in some quarters.
He added: “First, there is a National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) that was initiated by the Buhari administration in 2018/2019. The NLTP has not been fully implemented and there is already a unit within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security that can run with this plan. So, it seems like the jettisoning of the NLTP despite huge financial resources that had been invested in that plan. I recall that three or four states were used as pilot states under Buhari but we have not been told what success rates were achieved. And the discontinuation of policies of previous administrations isn’t going to get us anywhere; because the NLTP has the input of the state governments.
“Don’t forget that it is the state governments that own the land. The Federal Government does not own one hectare of land anywhere in the country. That is why you continually hear Mr. President say that the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, is their landlord because all land in the FCT is vested in the Minister of the FCT as all land in a state is vested in the governor of the state. So, if you don’t own land and you create a Ministry of Livestock Development, what are your plans? Without the buy-in of the state governments, we are going to be doing a top to bottom approach again.
“I applauded the president last week when he met with the National Economic Council and said he was giving state governors seven days within which to come up with their blueprints of how they want to deal with the issue of food security in their states. I said it was good thinking because they own the land; they can administer the land. They know which land to allocate. But when you now create a ministry of Livestock Development at the federal level, will it gel in Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross River and other states of the federation?
“Part of the challenge we had with the NLTP was that many southern states were not ready to release land for the ranching that was being proposed because of the fear of the seizure and annexation of their ancestral land.”
Ojo argued that the overhead of administering that ministry would erode the whole essence of establishing it, adding: “That was how the president decided to bring back the Ministry of Police Affairs and appointed two ministers in charge of the ministry. Meanwhile, a constitutional body such as the Police Service Commission (PSC) is poorly funded. So, where is the funding for the ministry?
“Secondly, livestock does not include all the animal husbandry. In fact, it is very narrow; it’s a micro segment of the agriculture value chain. So, if you have a separate ministry for livestock development, it is more like saying you are establishing a ministry of cattle. What happens to rabbitry, fishery, poultry and other aspects of animal husbandry that are not captured under livestock? Why will you single out livestock as if once you deal with livestock, every other thing will fall in place?” He stressed that he does not see the balkanisation of ministries as a means of increasing efficiency in governance.
You have been trying to implement the Oronsaye Report to reduce the number of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). So, why should you be creating more?” he queried.
Asked whether he sees the creation of the new ministry as a means of creating opportunities to reward the president’s political allies, Ojo said: “Of course it is 100 per cent. I don’t know what value addition this will bring. If you have a NLTP and you have a unit, department or directorate in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security that can drive the implementation of the plan, why do you have to create a full-fledged ministry? If you create a full-fledged ministry and you appoint two additional ministers as you have done with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, it will take the tally of your ministers to 50. Have we seen value for money in the last one year with the 48 he has appointed? Everybody was watching out for the overhauling of that cabinet after one year but none of such has happened.
“I was on a television programme to do an assessment of the one year anniversary of Tinubu and struggled to come up with names of performing ministers. Maybe two or three of them could be said to be performing out of 48 and that is very poor. Now if you add one or two more to it with the attendant challenges that I have highlighted, it will just increase the cost of governance. So, the president should have strengthened the existing unit under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security rather than creating additional layers of bureaucracy.”
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