.Says his angry colleagues lack capacity to speak out .FCT counterpart calls for scrap of portfolio, laments how office limits capacity, talent Deji Elumoye in Abuja Minister of State for
.FCT counterpart calls for scrap of portfolio, laments how office limits capacity, talentMinister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, has told President Muhammadu Buhari in plain language that it is a constitutional aberration to appoint Minister of State.
“Successive governments have come and gone and many who were appointed as Ministers of State have not spoken out at a forum such as this because of the risk of sounding ungrateful to the Presidents who appointed them.” “What I am about to say, therefore, is not and should not be construed as an indication of ingratitude. Far from it. What I am about to say is just my own little contribution to our constitutional development as a relatively young democracy and to aid future governments to optimize the performance of those they appoint as Ministers.
Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President. “In addition to the above, the Ministers-designate appear before the Senate and are grilled and cleared AS MINISTERS, not as Ministers in some instances and Ministers of State in some other instances. It is at the point of assignment of portfolios that successive Presidents then reclassified some as “Ministers of State.”
“What is more, Ministers are appointed pursuant to Section 147 of the 1999 Constitution to represent each State of the Federation. Therefore, Ministers sit in Cabinet as the eye of Mr. President in each State of the Federation. It is therefore against the intendment of the drafters of our Constitution for a representative of a State to be reclassified as against another representative of another State.
“Thirdly, the Schedules of Duties leave so many gaping holes that bring conflicts between the Ministers and Ministers of State. In addition, the provision that “Ministers of State” cannot present Memos in Council, except with the permission of the Minister, is another anomaly. It means the discretion of the Minister of State is subsumed in the discretion of the Minister, yet both of them represent different States in Cabinet.
“I understand that when this practice first surfaced in the First Republic, it was used as a contraption to give a semblance of “Government of National Unity”, when in actual fact no “real power” was ceded to the opposition members co-opted into government who were mostly designated as the Ministers of State, so as to keep them in check under the leadership of the ruling Party’s Ministers.
“Obviously, the argument that two Ministers are cramped into some Ministries in order not to unnecessarily proliferate Ministries and therefore save Government’s money is no longer tenable. This is because Government does not need any extra infrastructure or more money to maintain all Senior 36 Ministers or even a bit more appointed as is now the custom.
“We can also have a Minister of Trade and another Minister of Investment. We can have a Minister of Education and another Minister of Education ; we can have a Minister of Mines and another Minister of Steel; we can have a Minister of Works and another Minister of Housing and so on and so forth.
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