Fresh details have emerged regarding the dismissal of five ministers by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, highlighting the specific factors that led to their removal.
The former ministers—Prof. Tahir Mamman (SAN), Uju Kennedy Ohanenye, Dr. Jamila Bio Ibrahim, Lola Ade-John, and Abdullahi Muhammad Gwarzo—were dismissed on Wednesday in what the presidency described as a move to enhance the administration’s efficiency.
Public dissatisfaction with the ministers’ performance was a key factor in the decision. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, stated that the president acted based on public feedback and concrete data collected during a performance review process led by Hadiza Bala Usman, the Special Adviser on Policy and Coordination.
Usman’s team utilized technology to gauge public perceptions of the ministers, significantly influencing the president’s decision. “The president had challenged the ministers a few weeks ago to go out and inform Nigerians about their achievements over the past year. While the administration believed it was making progress, the public felt the government was underperforming. The ministers were not effectively communicating the government’s accomplishments,” Onanuga explained in an interview with Arise TV.
Tahir Mamman
Sources told Daily Trust that Prof. Tahir Mamman’s dismissal as Minister of Education was largely due to controversies surrounding his handling of appointments to the governing councils of tertiary institutions. These appointments faced criticism for not adequately representing Nigeria’s federal character, leading to disproportionate representation for some states.
“The nomination did not reflect the federal character of the country,” Onanuga noted. Mamman, a former Vice-Chancellor of Baze University, also struggled with several policies that alienated significant portions of the public, including a controversial minimum age requirement for university admissions, which sparked widespread debate and dissatisfaction. His tenure was marked by growing frustration over the ministry’s management of issues like foreign students’ participation in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program, leaving many Nigerian graduates from universities in Benin and Togo unable to enroll. A non-governmental organization, Education for Accelerated Development (EDAD), described Mamman’s removal as long overdue.
Uju Kennedy Ohanenye
Uju Kennedy Ohanenye, the former Minister of Women Affairs, was involved in multiple public relations missteps that contributed to her downfall. She had threatened to sue the United Nations over alleged mismanagement of funds and faced backlash for her comments on the sexual harassment scandal at the University of Calabar (UNICAL). In a viral video, she appeared to defend the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Cyril Ndifon, who was accused of harassment by students, suggesting that the students were being manipulated by external parties. This sparked outrage and calls for her resignation from gender rights groups.
Her controversies continued in May when she attempted to prevent the Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, from marrying off 100 orphans from his constituency. In August, she again made headlines for disrupting two events in Abuja, claiming they were held without her authorization.
Other Dismissed Ministers
According to Daily Trust, the other dismissed ministers—Lola Ade-John, Abdullahi Tijjani Gwarzo, and Dr. Jamila Bio Ibrahim—were removed due to their perceived lack of impact in their respective roles. Sources indicated that Ade-John’s frequent absences and minimal contributions to the tourism sector, along with Gwarzo and Ibrahim’s inability to achieve meaningful progress in housing and youth development, were factors in their dismissal.