President Buhari, Loyalty Is Not Enough, Etcetera Says

The President might be having problem with the issue of
trust, thereby looking to appoint only those that will stay loyal to him, but
we also want him to look beyond loyalty. No matter how loyal appointees are to
the President, they also need to know what to do and how to do it once they get
the jobs. The ability to manage, design, and effectively carry out new
programmes, implement key legislation, and deliver services should be
prominent—indeed primary—criteria for choosing potential appointees.

Those who have cited loyalty as the reason why mostly
northerners have been appointed so far into the President’s cabinet should note
that there are no systematic data on how loyalty results in effective
performance in governance. I can also argue that loyalty or not, political
appointees are often not truly loyal to the President because they also have
personal agendas, thereby having multiple loyalties.

Even where appointees are responsive to presidential
agendas, some tend to lack the managerial skills to enact those agendas
successfully. Most of the names I see on this list are political lobbyists,
presidential campaign workers, and trusted aides to political godfathers. Some
may have substantial policy expertise, but almost all are essentially soloists,
not team players.

It is worrisome that in Nigeria, when it comes to selecting
people for the executive arm of the government, we tend to abandon professional
standards. The professional standards we do observe are limited to technical
and programme expertise. The ability to manage, design, and effectively carry
out new programmes, implement key legislation, and deliver services has never been
prominent criteria for evaluating potential political appointees in this
country. Would any large corporation place at the head of its major operating
division a person with no experience in managing funds or supervising people?
What enterprise would fill every senior management position with a person with
little or no industry experience? Who would accept the mindless notion that any
loyal or good-spirited individual can run a government agency?

An appointee’s success in changing the behaviour of a ministry
is related not only to their loyalty to the president and commitment to his
policies, but also to their managerial skills and experience, their
personalities, and their plans for achieving goals. While the environment of a
ministry may be outside a President’s control, appointing skillful and
experienced ministers with appropriate personalities and designs for achieving
goals is not. The President should take full advantage of that opportunity.

You can say that conventional wisdom demands that the
President considers personal loyalty and commitment to his programmes in
selecting candidates for positions in his government, but you should also
consider that the kind of ministers or political appointees we have had over
the years shows that loyalty has never helped any Nigerian President achieve
his goals.

And whether or not the President appoints political
opponents in his cabinet or not, the issue is that quality matters. The greater
the administrative challenge, the more sophisticated the design needed to
exploit it, and the greater the premium on analytical ability, managerial and
political skills, and personality—on those skills that bring out the best in a
government.