Buhari urged by chamber of commerce and labour to rethink naming himself oil minister

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has been urged by the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (Naccima) to reconsider his decision to appoint himself as petroleum minister as it will be too distracting.

 

Earlier this week while at the United Nations in New York, President Buhari said he will be responsible for the petroleum ministry, although he will appoint a minister of state to assist him. However, Nacccima has asked him to reconsider the stance as running the petroleum ministry would be a distraction for the president and it will also result in him lumbering himself with an excessive workload.

 

Billy Harry, Naccima's national vice president, stated that the president already had too much work to do to saddle himself with a ministerial appointment. He added that if President Buhari really wants to bring the change dividend that Nigeria voted for, he should focus on administering all the ministries from a vantage point as president, not as a minister and a president.

 

Mr Harry said: “It will distract him and not give him the required space and work time to be able to administer facets of the economy and policies. We have so many more issues other oil as agriculture alone can swallow everything that oil is doing.

 

"Agriculture alone can give us over 500% of income stream of what oil is doing, so, does it mean that if he wants to curb corruption in that sector, he has to also be minister of agriculture? The president has to be very focused on job of supervising the entire economy as a polity, so I don’t think I will advise him to saddle himself with additional responsibility.”

 

Peter Esele, the former president of the Trade Union Congress, added that President Buhari would be saddled with a huge volume of work which might likely hinder him from concentrating on some sectors of the economy. Mr Esele, who is also a former president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, added that he is of the opinion that a minister should oversee the ministry.

 

Mr Esele said: “Theoretically, he can get away with it to a level but what I am also looking at is the volume of work, because I think that the president has so much clean up to do. Not only in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with institutionalising transparency and best practice and not only in the oil and gas sector but in the entire economy, so that we can move on.

 

"However no matter what happened, we should give the president the benefit of the doubt because if it works, we all clap for him and if he fails, he will be criticised. I think the bottom line is that he is the president and he is going to appoint a minister of state for petroleum and from what I gathered, the minister of state and the NNPC group managing director will report to him."

 

He added that during the time of former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, there was no minister of state as the president was the minister of petroleum and he only had a special adviser on petroleum, which is not the same office as a minister. Yesterday President Buhari sent a list of 21 ministerial nominees to the senate for approval.