President Bola Tinubu ought to have recused himself as the minister overseeing the Ministry of Petroleum to give credence to the cabinet reshuffle which he carried out on Wednesday.
This is the view of some analysts on the prospects of the changes the president made in his cabinet.
Dr Chike Obasi, a public affairs analyst, said he does not see anything better from the reshuffle.
According to him, “President Tinubu is still making decisions on the petroleum industry. He understands what he is doing. Even if he decides to give the petroleum ministry to his son, if the son is capable, there is no problem.
“But I think he needed somebody who should be hands in gloves with the other key agencies in the petroleum industry to see that things are done properly.
“I had expected the president to have recused himself from that job and allowed another person to take charge, with a clear mandate given to him.
“I want these refineries to be fully operational; not just the gasoline, but the by-products as well.
“Value chains should be added to what exists presently. I want CNG plants to be duplicated across the federation.
“We don’t need somebody wearing Agbada to be supervising that industry.”
Obasi berated Tinubu’s economic policies and what he described as “their insensitivity to Nigerians’ welfare.”
He continued, “In the past year, things have not met our expectations. You removed the fuel subsidy and said the naira should float, and things have gone from bad to worse.
“You inherited naira at the parallel market at N700 per dollar. Today, the naira is about N1,700 per dollar. You inherited an economy of about N300bn GDP. Today you have an economy that is less than N200bn.”
Dr Chijioke Eke, a lecturer, advised President Tinubu to declare a state of emergency on the economy “using our technocrats to achieve our micro-economic stability.”
He also expressed disappointment that rather than reducing the number of ministers to reduce the cost of governance, President Tinubu increased them contrary to the recommendations of the Oronsaye Report.
According to him, “I had expected him to prune the ministries down to about thirty. But he made them over forty ministers.
“By next year, we should be able to do an appraisal of what he is doing, and where his policies are leading Nigeria.
“But I don’t see any significant things coming from all these things. The best we can see is to stabilise the economy the way it is.
“If he doesn’t do that, we might get the economy worsened. We try to imitate China wrongly. China depreciated its economy to allow investors to come in, but China is producing. In our case, we don’t produce anything.”