President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Okafor Ofiebor Port Harcourt

The Niger Delta Rights Advocates (NDRA) welcomed this week’s confirmation by Presidential Spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga of an imminent cabinet shake-up.

NDRA had earlier in the year advocated the recalibration of the cabinet as presently constituted and this position corroborates that of the larger spectrum of stakeholders.

This was contained in the NDRA press statement Signed by Chuks Alozie

Head of Research,

Niger Delta Rights Advocate in which it demanded that the Policy Coordination and the Central Delivery Coordination Unit (CDCU) under the Presidency be insulated from political nuances.

The group said this is the only way a proper Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of the performance of Ministers who are the salesmen of the administration’s policies/agenda, can get a fair and trustworthy assessment.

“We would also like to state that making the component factors for this assessment of public officers such as Cabinet Ministers should be open to public debate and scrutiny. This will enhance transparency in the process of evaluation in the future”.

The NDRA  proposed that as part of a strategy to implement the much talked about Steve Orasanye report on the harmonisation of MDAs and to help the government cut costs. For instance, the group suggested that the Ministry of Police Affairs be integrated into the Interior Ministry under Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo as the Ministry under Dr Tunji-Ojo has delivered on the critical elements of good governance and public accountability which has increased citizens’ trust in the present administration.

The NDRA believes that performance should be measured in terms of the level of achievement of the objectives of each Ministry (which simply put is effectiveness) or the level of costs incurred to achieve these objectives (efficiency). We believe that the Interior Ministry under the current administration has hit that mark and signpost efficiency for a public agency.

Furthermore, NDRA  challenged the Policy Coordination and the Central Delivery Coordination Unit (CDCU)  to publish its benchmarks (tools/indicators) for further public scrutiny and contestation of logic to ensure that those public officials who fall terribly below par, do not even get the chance to hold public offices in future (whether elective or appointment).

It will also help ruling parties to cascade the idea of properly scrutinizing persons they nominate into public offices going forward.