Stakeholders in various sectors yesterday set the agenda for the new ministers inaugurated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Those who spoke included experts in various sectors and ordinary Nigerians. They said there was no time to waste because Nigeria required serious rejuvenation to break the yoke of poverty, deprivation, insecurity, unemployment and inflation, among others.
Daily Trust sampled opinions on what citizens expect in the petroleum sector in the wake of fuel subsidy removal, revival of education at all levels, as well as aviation, poverty eradication, works, among others.
Tinubu’s ground rules
During their inauguration on Monday, Tinubu told the new ministers that Nigerians are highly expecting delivery, accountability and transparency as they begin to discharge their responsibilities.
The president spoke after 45 new members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) took oath of office at the Conference Centre of the State House in Abuja.
President Tinubu said he expected them to serve with integrity and dignity as they presided over the ministries of federal government in this administration of Renewed Hope.
Tinubu said: “It is the highest honour to be chosen to serve as the minister in the Federal Executive Council of our beloved Republic. With such high honour, comes tremendous responsibility.
“All of you who have been sworn in have been called to distinguish yourselves. It is me who knows you. I delegate this authority but Nigerians are highly expecting delivery and accountability and transparency.
“I expect that you will serve with integrity, dignity and deliver. I will hold you to that standard we all promised Nigerians.
“Your assignment begins immediately. As your country honours you today, by this call to service, you must each work to make yourself worthy in the eyes of God and our entire nation’s people.
“Your highest obligation is to retire public faith in government so that our people can once again believe that the right hands in government can show. I believe in you that the government can be a positive force for transformation and a vehicle for collective progress of this country.
“I wish you success in this new assignment. We are on this boat, even if it is a vehicle and I am the driver, the entire Nigerians are behind sitting and watching as you and I navigate this vehicle.
“We must hold each other responsible. We have to do the job to meet the expectations of all Nigerians,” he said.
He said the Renewed Hope agenda of his administration had the opportunity to implement long overdue reforms that would improve the operation of government, transform the nation’s economy and ensure peace, safety and prosperity for people.
Experts ask agric minister to push for agency for food reserve
Stakeholders in the agricultural sector have predicted some of the challenges awaiting the incoming minister of agriculture and suggested what should be done to address the increasing hike in prices of foods in a very short possible time.
They called on the minister, Abubakar Kyari, to live up to expectations and address the problems.
The President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc Kabiru Ibrahim, advised the incoming minister to see all the stakeholders in the sector as purely non-governmental and properly involve them in driving the activities of the ministry.
He said that the immediate challenge in the sector at the moment is how to find an immediate solution to the hike in prices of foods across the country.
Arc Ibrahim listed some of the causes of the hike to include the high cost of farm inputs like fertilisers, improved seeds and high cost of labour, insecurity among others as well the impact of forex in the economy.
The farmers’ leader advised the incoming minister to resuscitate the National Food Reserve Agency and make it work in synergy with NASC, SGR, ARCN and all other relevant stakeholders in the food system.
He noted that nothing much had been done about livestock development and animal feed production over the years, especially as it concerns cattle.
He said, “Let’s know what has become of the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP). Can we know the stages where the various states that keyed in are, even though the CBN is doing something with the big players in the milk importing companies in Niger State?”
In an earlier interview, the President of the National Palm Produce Association of Nigeria (NPPAN), Mr Alphonsus Inyang, advised the minister to focus his energy on the development of a more sustainable sector of the agriculture industry through well-articulated policies and massive development of tree crop commodities such as oil palm, cocoa, cashew nuts, rubber, coconut, tea and coffee to recover the lost glory of the country in the production, processing and export of the commodities.
Also, the President of Sunflower Association of Nigeria (SAN), Alhaji Ahmed Jibrin, in an earlier interview, wants the minister to focus extensively on commodities value chain development and carry all the directors of the ministry along.
Mr Jimoh Alake, an agriculturist, noted that there was a huge gap in extension agents-farmers ratio, which had a limiting effect on technology transfer to farmers.
He urged the new minister to pay attention to the extension service to enable the farmers in rural areas to be adequately guided.
Fuel crisis biting harder
Whilst the announcement of the ministers did not indicate a senior minister for the petroleum industry, Heineken Lokpobiri, a former Nigerian senator, was named the Minister of State for Petroleum and Ekperikpe Epko, a former member of the House of Representatives, was named the Minister of State for Gas Resources.
The junior minister of petroleum is expected to push for the completion of the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries. This is critical considering that, one of the key demands by the organised labour in Nigeria (Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) is that President Tinubu should give a timeline within which the government owned refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri would resume production.
The minister will also be expected to resolve challenges affecting the petroleum sector, most especially the issues of crude theft, lack of oil investments and further development of the country’s oil assets to increase revenues from the petroleum sector.
Similarly, Mr Ekpo will be working to execute the policies passed by Mr Tinubu’s administration that are geared towards making the country utilise its gas potential for power generation and distribution, clean cooking, auto-use and industrialisation.
FCT minister urged to restore lost glory of Abuja, others
Residents and other stakeholders in the FCT have called on the new minister, Nyesom Wike, to quickly restore the lost glory of the nation’s capital.
To the residents, restoring the decaying infrastructure in the nation’s capital city will be the main challenge.
Wike had yesterday shortly after assuming office warned those distorting the master plan of the FCT to expect demolition of their properties soon.
“Be you a minister or ambassador, if you know you have developed where you are not supposed to develop, your house must go down,” he said.
Mr Toyin Ajayi, a public affairs analyst, noted that virtually all the public facilities, ranging from street lights, roads, effective transportation system as well drainage system have collapsed.
He said, “Many streets in Abuja are always dark at night because the street light system has collapsed. The drainage system is bad. You will see the rot whenever it rains in the Abuja city centre, something urgent needed to be done by the incoming minister.’’
Joseph Shapayi said, “The new minister must make sure relevant agencies like Satellite Towns Development Agency are made to work. Honestly, I don’t know the work of this agency, go to the major towns in the area councils, from Bwari to Kwali, Abaji, Karshi, Kuje among others, you will doubt if you are in the FCT. They are all in a mess, so the new minister will have to kick the ball rolling immediately.
Barrister Ahmad said addressing the protracted land allocation issue requires the attention of the incoming minister.
He said there are issues of unresolved double allocation, the difficulty in getting land allocation from the FCTA through the AGIS and the high cost of land, when such allocation gets to a second party.
Mrs Ignedu Momoh, a resident, advised the incoming minister to pay attention to the Abuja Greater Water Project, which has been going on for long but without any hope of completion date.
A retired military officer, Abdullahi Ahmed, said the incoming minister of the FCT must strengthen security at communities in the councils, noting that majority of the rural dwellers could no longer go to their farms because of incessant kidnaping, rape and farmers/herders clashes.
Keyamo advised to revamp aviation sector
The aviation industry was in the eye of the storm in the twilight of the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Nigerians could not forget in a hurry when the former minister, Senator Hadi Sirika announced the birth of Nigeria Air and an aircraft painted in green white green was received at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja amidst fanfare.
But the aircraft, which was later discovered to belong to Ethiopian Airlines was never seen again after it returned to its base, after the fanfare, at a time the airline was yet to receive an Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC).
The Acting Managing Director of the airline, Capt. Dapo Olumide later told a House of Representatives committee that the aircraft was hired from Ethiopian Airlines to display how the Nigeria Air aircraft would look like.
Senator Sirika is no longer in the saddle but the industry awaits the next minister who is expected to inherit the assets, liabilities and answer the many unanswered posers about the Nigeria Air.
Apart from this, the new minister is expected to be confronted with the recent reorganisation carried out on the eve of the exit of the last minister, which is still unsettling the industry with many stakeholders calling on the new administration to clear the mess.
The reorganisation, according to stakeholders, has created some distortions in the activities of the agencies in aviation.
Another major issue the new minister would contend with is the composition of the governing boards of the agencies carried out by the last administration in its last days.
For the eight years that former President Muhammadu Buhari was in the saddle, the agencies were run without their statutory boards contrary to the provision of the acts establishing them. Industry experts, stakeholders and players cried foul for eight years without results only for the boards to be announced on May 29 when the new administration was being sworn-in. However, the boards have not been inaugurated yet.
Stakeholders say failure to appoint governing boards as stipulated by the acts establishing the organisations is not good for the smooth running of the agencies.
Former President of Aviation Roundtable, Dr. Gbenga Olowo urged the incoming minister to look into this and remedy the situation. According to him, failure to appoint boards of agencies “portends absolute non-observance of corporate governance.
“Processes are planned and executed in secrecy, autocratic management gives room for speculation and suspicion with incessant industrial unrest as it is lately.
“The industry has witnessed inappropriate engagement of unskilled men and even politicians into strategic professional offices to the detriment of skilled and qualified candidates within and outside the system,” he said.
Also, foreign airlines’ funds trapped in Nigeria have hit over $700m and the airlines in response to the issue suspended lower inventories of tickets on their website.
Olowo recalled that during the early 1990s, airlines like Swiss Air, Scandinavia, Alitalia, and Varig Brazilian Airlines, among others exited Nigeria on account of trapped funds, saying this resulted in massive job losses, the collapse of industries, the collapse of trade and commerce and strained relations among the operating nations such as cumbersome visa restriction regime.
His words, “Today, the foreign airlines are using all forms of strategy to withdraw their inventories and seats out of Nigeria’s Point of Sale (POS) and may eventually quit as demonstrated with the on and off flight operations of once flourishing Emirates Airlines.”
Principal Partner, Avaero Capital, Sindy Foster said, “There are a few immediate challenges, which require prompt actions by the incoming minister.”
The challenges she listed included industrial disputes; delays caused by VIP movement and bird strikes; blocked funds; aviation fuel availability and cost; optimisation of Lagos airport runways; sunset airport operating hours.
On his part, the President of Aircraft Owners and Pilots’ Association, Capt. Alex Nwuba said the role of the ministry should be more strategic and about policy implementation than dabbling into the regulatory functions of the NCAA and airport management role of FAAN.
Strong leadership, institutions in education
Many stakeholders argued that education is yet to get the right professionals to overturn the sector, which has been challenged by inadequate funds, incessant strike at the tertiary institutions, high number of out of school children and inadequate qualified teachers among others in the last few years.
“There are lots of things that need to be done in order to achieve the desired education sector we want. Let me start by saying that we need strong leadership and strong institutions,” said Professor Nasiru Idris.
Professor Idris, who is the Director, Ibrahim Usman Jibril Institute for the Built Environment, Nasarawa State University, Keffi said the incoming minister can do more in the education sector not only in the area of funding but also through channelling the required allocation based on priorities.
Our correspondent reports that Nigeria has been challenged by the issue of a high number of out-of-school children. After being named among the top three with the highest number globally, many efforts have been made to bring the number down, but challenges of incessant attacks on schools, communities by insurgency, poverty, among others have continued to push the number up.
Currently, there is conflicting figures as to what the number is but the last figure quoted by UNICEF is about 18 million.
According to an educationist, Michael Sule, the out-of-school phenomenon has become a national embarrassment and needs to be addressed by the government if they must make headway.
Also, the quality of learning in basic and secondary education in the country has been adjudged low as the World Bank disclosed that Nigeria is experiencing learning poverty as over 70 per cent of children between 10 years cannot understand or perform basic numeracy tasks.
For Nigeria to get it right in the education sector, basic and secondary education must be given all the necessary attention by providing adequate funds and facilities to improve on the quality of learning.
Also, UNESCO recommended 26 per cent of the government’s budget to be the threshold for the education sector.
However, Nigeria is yet to meet this requirement even though the federal government has argued that with the intervention from TETFund, they have surpassed the requirement.
Prof Idris said: “For me, the allocation of the education sector is still far below expectation due to the level of decay and the current state of the sector in Nigeria today. Nigeria cannot make any headway with the current education budget when compared with other developing countries in Africa and Asia.”
Also, the power play that has emanated from the feud between Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and federal government overtime, due to failure of the latter to meet the demands of the union bordering on welfare, infrastructures among others has always led to strike actions and the new minister of education has to confront it.
The incoming minister must find a way to resolve the feud permanently to avoid prolonged strikes, in addition to recruiting more lecturers.
A professor of communication, who does not want to be mentioned, told Daily Trust that the university system is suffering from inadequate lecturers and thus needs to recruit PhD holders in relevant courses in the universities.
According to him, the old ones are retiring without replacement.
“The new minister should ensure that more lecturers are recruited to serve theg growing needs of both the old and newly established institutions in the country,” he said.
Pate should confront dearth in health sector
The health sector is bedevilled with a lot of challenges, various stakeholders said.
Leading the pack is the massive brain drain in the health sector, unmet demands of the various health professionals bodies, particularly the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), which just came out of a nationwide strike, and the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) , persistent infectious disease outbreaks ,recurrent industrial actions, inadequate and dilapidated health infrastructure, poor service delivery from primary to tertiary level of care, medical tourism and high out of pocket expenditure for health.
Others are huge dependence on international donors for funding of health care, poor funding for research, quackery, dependence on imported medicines, equipment and vaccines, high infant and maternal mortality, poor health insurance coverage, poor accountability with funding and rivalry among health professionals.
Our correspondent reports that the mass exodus of health workers such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and medical laboratory scientists for greener pastures outside the country has enormous implications on the health sector, which already has a manpower shortage and an overburdened workforce.
This has further led to a situation where many hospitals and whole states lack doctors in some specialties leaving patients stranded.
About 11,000 nurses and midwives left Nigeria for developed countries in the last three years, according to a research conducted by the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) via the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale (PACFaH@Scale) programme.
“A report by the United Kingdom (UK) Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has revealed that as of March 2022, the number of Nigerian trained nurses who are now on the UK permanent register has increased from 2,796 in 2018 to 7,256 as of March 2022,” it said.
The National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), in May this year also lamented that over 75, 000 nurses and midwives migrated out of the country in the last five years.
The new minister would also have to address the recurrent disease outbreaks annually. Medical experts have called for improved measures to prevent and not only respond to the outbreaks. Common ones include the current diphtheria outbreak, Lassa fever, meningitis and monkey pox among others.
Nigerians need constant power supply
Nigeria’s power sector has over the years been plagued with a variety of issues that have proven stubborn to solve by the federal government.
Since the privatisation of the sector in 2013, issues of poor power supply are yet to be a bygone issue in the country. Analysts blamed this to a lack of infrastructure to increase the generation capacity of the country as well as wheel the entire power generated by power Generation Companies (GenCos) to power Distribution Companies (DisCos).
For instance, the country currently has the capacity to generate 12,000 Megawatts (MW) of electricity but the average transmitted to the DisCos is 4,000MW over the years.
A yearly occurrence of collapse of the country’s national grid has not been witnessed this year but the incoming minister needs to bring on a thinking cap to proffer solutions that have eluded previous administrations.
According to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), there exist 26 power plants with 18 powered by gas, four powered by hydro, two by steam and two powered by gas/steam-powered plants.
Despite the country having a large reserve of gas with an estimate of 200.79 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), the country still faces severe shortage to meet up with local demand as little of the reserve is tapped, thereby forcing importation of the product.
This makes the sub-sector struggle as its price is fixed on the dollar exposing the country to instability of the Naira. The current Russian- Ukraine war has added to the challenge with shortage as such the price has increased due to the high demand from wealthy nations. Also, the issue of DisCos underpaying their bills to the GenCos has been a problem in the sector.
Commenting on the way forward for the incoming minister, the convener of PowerUpNigeria, an electric power consumer right advocacy group, Adetayo Adegbemle, said market liquidity has become a perennial problem for the power sector, but policy makers are not considering the root cause, and in dealing with the issue and solve it effectively.
“The truth remains that unless the issue of metering is resolved, we would continue to experience stunted growth in the power sector. This metering covers every interface in the power sector, from the generators interface with transmission, to transmission’s interface with the distributors, and ultimately to the distributors interface with final consumers.
“In solving this problem, I have been advocating for an establishment of the local metering ecosystem and a local metering standards,” he said.
Battered roads require attention
Nigeria currently has 200,000km of roads with the federal government responsible for 35,000km while the rest belong to the 36 states. The ones controlled by the federal government were mostly built during the military era as well as the early years of Nigeria’s independence, as such they are aged, ridden with potholes and/or in general state of disrepair.
The erstwhile Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said in spite of the shortfall in the federal government’s revenue, arising from weakness in the global economy, the last administration was able to construct and complete over 8,352.94 kilometres of roads
The minister also stated that the rehabilitation of 12 major roads – spanning 896.187 kilometres across the country – within the same period has led to reduction of travel time by 56.20 per cent and added value to the people in the communities, where the roads pass through.
The past government also introduced legacy projects, which it was unable to complete, this includes the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway and the Lagos-Shagamu-Ibadan Dual Carriageway.
Though, government was able to complete to complete the 2nd Niger Bridge, the new minister would be faced with the task on the rehabilitation and completion of the Abuja-Kaduna section of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway and the Lagos-Shagamu-Ibadan Dual Carriageway Section I (Lagos-Shagamu) in Lagos State.
Also, roads across the North Central have been in bad shape over the years but the use of Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme has provided little succour.
The previous government also used instruments like the SUKUK bond and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) to rehabilitate some of the roads.
Humanitarian ministry deserves realistic register
Ummul Kair Aliyu, a volunteer in Kano said she sees the ministry of humanitarian affairs facing a lot of challenges and therefore called on the minister, Dr Betta Edu to take the issue of the National Social Register seriously.
She said the register would help to identify poor people, elderly, widows, disabled people amongst others to help distribution of palliatives and other poverty alleviation materials to the right people.
“She should promote and develop more skills acquisition programmes for people across the country. She should really look into the plight of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and ensure they are taken proper care of and possibly resettled back to their homes,” she said.
By Muideen Olaniyi, Hussein Yahaya, Chidimma C. Okeke, Ojoma Akor, Umar Farouk, Maureen Onochie (Abuja), Abdullateef Aliyu & Eugene Agha (Lagos)
