There should be consequences for failure — Shamsuddeen tells Tinubu

A former Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Shamsudeen Usman, has advised President Bola Tinubu to tell his cabinet members that there will be consequences for failing to discharge their duties.

Usman spoke in Abuja Thursday when he chaired the 21st Daily Trust Dialogue.

He said that was the only way the president could match action with words when he (Tinubu) said failure was not an option.

He said it was a disgrace that the national grid should collapse and throw the whole country into blackout.

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He said that ministers should be assessed at intervals and anyone that fails to measure up should be shown the way out.

 He said: “The president is ultimately responsible, but he cannot do it alone and he cannot be everywhere. So, he is delegating authority, clear key performance indicators have to be set. These key indicators are meant to be shared with the public. It is not enough to say that we have set the indicators, this must be made public so that we can actually see whether they are achieving the target that has been set.

“The second thing to commend the president for is that he said failure is not an option, so if failure is not an option, then there is the need to define what failure is and what are the consequences of failure. That is why making those indicators public is very important. You have to define failure and define the consequences of failure.

“In power and security, we did the indicators at that time. On the positive side, one of the indicators was we looked at zones by zones as specified in a certain minimum number of hours of supply of electricity that the minister must ensure per day, so you are targeted to ensure a minimum number of hours of electricity.

“The police have the data of crimes across the country, and we were tracking how to bring down the crime rate over time as part of the indicators. The minister of works, the number of hours you can travel between A and B, if it used to take four hours, if you are building a new road, the benefits of the road is that we can measure the number of hours to travel. There have to be numbers that you can explain and show to the public that you are making progress.

“When I talked about failure, the indicators and the consequences, the minister of power, we did specify that it is a disgrace in this country for the national grid to collapse, we have had several instances where the national grid collapses, the whole of Nigeria is in blackout, it is unheard of, we have problems with the electricity, so we specify, we had the statistics, so we say minister of power, you are going to start reducing, ensuring that this system breakdowns are brought to zero over a certain period of time and if you are not able to do that at the end of that period. You will resign or the president will sack you; that is what I mean by consequences of failure.

“It is good that President Tinubu has said failure is not an option, but there has to be those consequences stated clearly.

“For the minister of police affairs, I will include kidnappings for example, which is something that is bothering everyone, given the numbers and given the period to say in the next one year bring down the number of kidnappings to whatever and in the next two years to zero.

“If you give a minister that task, it changes the minister’s perspective and he realises that it is not about issuing contracts, it is a lot more than that.

“What it requires is the coordination of everybody to ensure results. That will determine whether Nigerians are the winner or not, arising from all these government policies. We have to quantify the gains and losses to be able to identify winners and losers.

He also said the best way to know who is winning and who is losing in the economic policies of President Tinubu is by setting up the central delivery unit, which is working on key performance indicators for all the ministries.

“At the end of each year or as promised by the person who is heading that function, on a quarterly basis, we will get results of performances by each of the ministers,” the former minister said.