- Pastor Bakare has revealed why it took President Buhari some time to form his cabinet
- The Lagos-based Christian cleric says Buhari could not pick ministers for six months because there was no money to pay them
- Bakare however faulted the president's choice of ministers when they eventually emerged, saying some of them were square pegs in round holes
- The pastor also blamed the ruling party APC for making President Buhari pick a poor cabinet
Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly has claimed that the reason President Muhammadu Buhari did not appoint ministers for six months after assuming office in 2015 was because there was no money to pay them.
According to The Cable, Bakare, the presiding cleric of the Lagos-based church, said this in an interview he granted a media house in Calgary, Canada.
The preacher also faulted President Buhari’s appointment, claiming that they were square pegs in round holes.
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He said: “In Nigeria, what I have found out is we put square pegs in round holes, and round pegs in square holes. For example, the person in charge of budget and planning is a lawyer.
“What experience has he gotten other than federal character. You can begin to look at each ministry the same way, and the civil service that is supposed to be the memory bank of government, they’ve promoted mediocrity
“In Britain, in America, they go to Oxford, they go to Yale, they go to Harvard, and attract the best brains into civil service to formulate policies. 25 years down the road, we take the relics of society, the dropouts and we bring them in, and we expect to outperform those who have invested in those critical sectors of human capital development.
“What percentage of our annual budget goes into education, and what percentage has gone into grass cutting and cutlery? When it was made public that there were no sufficient druugs in the Aso Villa clinic, the nation should have known where their health is.”
According to the report, Bakare praised former president Olusegun Obasanjo for setting up the best cabinet made up of the best and brightest minds from across the world.
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He however blamed the Buhari's party All Progressives Congress (APC) for not allowing him to have a good cabinet.
Bakare said Obasanjo was able to achieve this because he worked with one party, the Peoples Democratic Party. The story, he said, is difference for President Buhari who has to work with APC, that is a union of strange bedfellows.
“The allegations by the Nigerian public is that those around the president are also stealing, and some names have been mentioned. You cannot be a clean man surrounded by rogues, if you don’t deal with those rogues, they would colour you with the same tar.
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“Development under President Buhari Buhari has been slow because as he said, he inherited an empty treasury. For six months, he could not appoint ministers because there was no money to pay them, and little by little, thank God, oil picked up.
“But a person like Obasanjo will now attack him and say, rightly, the price of oil had fallen completely and I met an empty treasury but I didn’t give excuses, I worked.
“But the difference is this, Obasanjo assembled the best, the brightest from across the nations of the earth, economists that knew their onions, to begin to help steer the affairs of the nation, and that is less seen in this administration.”
Pastor Bakare's words come just weeks after Legit.ng reported that President Buhari was allegedly considering a reshuffle of his cabinet in a bid to strengthen his chances of succeeding at the presidential polls in February.
A source in the presidency claimed that it could happen at the emergency meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) or it could be delayed for a few weeks.
The emergency FEC meeting scheduled for Friday, December 7, was primarily convened for approval for the 2019 Appropriation Bill, with the government hoping to present the budget proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly next week.
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