ON Monday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu nominated Taiwo Oyedele as the Minister of State for Finance, replacing Dr Doris Anite-Uzoka, who will now move to the Ministry of Budget and National Planning as Minister of State. That makes it her third portfolio in this administration. Three portfolios in under three years. If that does not tell you something about the nature of this cabinet, I don’t know what will.
With Oyedele’s nomination ,he was until now the chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms the cabinet has ballooned to 51 ministers. Fifty-one. That is arguably the largest cabinet in the history of this country. Let that sink in for a moment. We have 51 ministers in a country where most citizens cannot name 10 of them. And that right there is the problem.
I think it is time for President Tinubu to do a major rejig of this cabinet. Not the kind of cosmetic touch-up we saw some months ago when the defence minister, Abubakar Badaru, resigned and General Chris Musa took over, or when the science and technology minister, Uche Nnaji, resigned over a school controversy. Those were minor edits. What we need now, as we approach the president’s third anniversary in office, is a comprehensive overhaul.
Here is the hard truth. Out of 51 ministers, how many can you point to and say, yes, that person is delivering? I will be generous and say maybe 10. Maybe. The rest are what I call ghost ministers; people who show up to collect their pay, attend Federal Executive Council meetings, and disappear into the bureaucratic fog until the next meeting. No initiatives, no visibility, no results. Just warm bodies occupying offices meant for people who should be driving the transformation agenda of this government.
Nyesom Wike, love him or loathe him, has turned the FCT into a construction site ,you can debate the priorities, but you cannot deny the man’s energy. The minister of works, David Umahi, whether you like his style or not, is visible. You can point to road projects and say the man is working. The minister of information, Mohamed Idris and budget and national planning Atiku Bagudu are visible .The aviation minister Festus Keyamo is all over the place trying to fix a sector that has been broken for decades. And a few others are pulling their weight.
But what about the other 40? What exactly are they doing? Can anyone tell me what the minister of science and innovation is up to right now? What about the minister of power? The minister of youth development in a country with the highest youth unemployment rate in West Africa? These are not trick questions. The silence from most of these ministries is deafening and that silence translates directly into stalled governance.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s unemployment rate stands at over 33 percent. The World Bank put our poverty figure at roughly 87 million people living on less than $2.15 a day as of 2024. These numbers should make every minister lose sleep. But the reality is that most of them are sleeping just fine because they have no targets, no key performance indicators, and apparently no consequences for underperformance.
Now, I understand politics. I understand that some of these appointments were made to reward loyalty, settle political debts, and maintain regional balance. That is the nature of the game, and I am not naive about it. But there comes a point when a president must choose between political comfort and legacy. We are approaching that inflection point.
President Tinubu has compensated enough people. The political debts have been paid. The allies have been rewarded. The zones have been represented. Congratulations to everyone who got their share of the national cake. But the party is over. It is time to ask a brutal question: what is the return on investment?
A cabinet of 51 ministers is not just bloated, it is expensive. Each minister comes with a convoy, a retinue of aides, security details, travel budgets, and all the accoutrements of office. In a country running a budget deficit north of N13 trillion in 2024 according to the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, we cannot afford to maintain a cabinet this size for the sake of political appeasement. Every dead-weight minister is a drain on resources that could fund classrooms, equip hospitals, or fix roads.
Some will argue that a large cabinet ensures representation from all parts of the country. Fine. But representation without performance is just tokenism. Putting a minister from every state does not help the people of that state if the minister is invisible. What they need is a minister who is fighting for resources, driving projects, and making noise in the right places. A minister who goes to bed thinking about the problems of his constituency and wakes up with solutions. Not one who goes to bed counting the perks of office.
Come to think of it, look at countries that are serious about governance. Rwanda has about 20 cabinet ministers. South Africa has 30. Even the United States, with the largest economy in the world, manages with about 25 cabinet-level positions. But Nigeria, a country still struggling with basic infrastructure, thinks 51 ministers is a good idea. We are not competing with these countries in economic output but we are beating them in the number of ministers. That should worry all of us.
Let me be clear. I am not asking the president to fire everybody and start from scratch. What I am suggesting is a thorough performance review. Set clear benchmarks. Ask each minister to present what they have achieved in the last two and a half years. Those who cannot justify their position should be replaced with competent people who can hit the ground running. If the minister of youth development has not moved the needle on youth employment or skills acquisition, bring someone who will. If the minister of agriculture has no plan for food security in a country importing food worth billions of dollars, find someone who does.
We have seen this work before. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was notorious for reshuffling his cabinet. He moved ministers around, sacked underperformers, and kept everyone on their toes. You can criticize Obasanjo for many things, but his ministers knew that the axe could fall at any time, and that knowledge alone is a powerful motivator. When ministers know their position is guaranteed regardless of performance, you get exactly what we have now complacency dressed in agbada.
The president has about less than two years left in his first term. Two years is not a lot of time, but it is enough to make a significant impact if the right people are in the right positions. A lean, hungry cabinet of 30 or 35 ministers who are accountable, visible, and results-driven will achieve far more than 51 ministers going through the motions.
On the Oyedele appointment specifically, I think it is a smart move. The man did solid work on the tax reform committee and bringing him into the cabinet to implement what he designed makes logical sense. You don’t hand over your blueprint to someone who was not part of the design process. But his appointment also raises a question if the president can identify competence and place people strategically like this, why is the same standard not applied across the entire cabinet? Why is competence the exception rather than the rule?
I also think the president should consider merging some ministries. Do we really need separate ministries for science and innovation, communications and digital economy, and technology? These can be collapsed into one ministry with a clear mandate. Same goes for some other overlapping portfolios that only exist because we need more slots to fill. Fewer ministries, fewer ministers, less waste, more focus.
The ghost ministers know themselves. They know they have been coasting. And I suspect the president knows too. The question is whether he will prioritise political comfort or take the difficult but necessary step of trimming the fat. History will not remember how many ministers you had. History will remember what they delivered.
As we approach the third year anniversary of this administration, the president should take a hard look at his team and make the tough calls. The people who put him in office did not do so to watch 51 ministers collect salaries while the country groans under the weight of insecurity, inflation, and unemployment. They voted for transformation. And transformation does not come from a bloated cabinet of political placeholders.
It is time to cut the deadwood and get serious. The president owes it to the millions who stood in line under the sun to vote for him. He owes it to the market women in Bodija, the farmers in Benue, the unemployed graduates roaming the streets of Lagos. They did not vote for a bloated cabinet. They voted for results. These are the issues.
- Nda-Isaiah is a political analyst based in Abuja and can be reached on jonesdryx@gmail.com. His syndicated column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Saturday.