Garba Shehu "Ministers under Buhari will be the most powerful ever," president's aide speculates

Mallam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari has hinted that Buhari's ministers would be the most powerful.

Mallam Shehu Garba...

 

"Let me tell you, if you allow me speculate, I will say, perhaps, ministers under President Buhari will be the most powerful ministers this country has ever seen because he is not the one who will interfere in the day-to-day matters of government," these were the words of one of the aides to President Buhari.

Speaking to Daily Trust on variety of issues, Mallam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President also hinted that Buhari's ministers would exercise full authorities in their respective ministries.

'The ministers will come and become political heads of their own ministries. They will exercise full authority.

'Quite unlike what obtained in the past, President Buhari would not shortlist contractors for ministers. His wife would not say this land should be given to anybody.

'He will not get involved in all these things. He will not have contractors fronting for him. So, if the ministers follow due process, they will realize that Buhari is the leader that everyone would love to work with.

'But at the same time, they will also find that he has no tolerance for breaches of due process. If a minister comes in and starts looting money, President Buhari will know. You know that such minister will not last one day in office. Otherwise if they are doing the right thing, they will realize that he doesn't stand in the way,' Shehu revealed.

On why it took the president over a 100 days in office before submitting his ministerial list, Shehu said, 'People, who say that it took the President a long time because he has been looking for saints, are not being fair to him. Nothing like that comes from him.'

Continuing, Shehu, who has accompanied the President to foreign nations since his appointment said, 'The President was concerned about the systematic decay; the rottenness in the system which he inherited and didn’t want to build upon.

'He said it would have been a grave mistake to have appointed ministers two, three days or one week after he had taken over. That would have meant a continuation of business as usual and unacceptable foundation that he found in place.

'The period of time was not used in looking for saints or people of high moral calibre. Probably, he is looking for such kind of people, but more importantly, he doesn’t want to operate a system in which revenues will be stolen and transferred to private pockets in either the crude oil sector or other revenue generating agencies that are allowed to keep accounts that they themselves don’t know how many existed.

'So, he is blocking all these leakages and trying to scrape the floor in order to make sure that if we are building something new, it must be something that would stand the test of time. We don’t have to build on the rotten foundation that was found in place. So, it is a cleansing process that takes more of this time than any other thing,' he explained.