Chairman of the senate committee on the Federal Capital Territory, Dino Melaye, has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to shake up his cabinet, by getting rid of non-performing ministers.
In a statement on Sunday, Melaye recommended the sack of three of Buhari’s top officials, adding that he is afraid his constituents could stone him someday if the current administration continues to fail.
Those Melaye recommended for sack include minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun; minister of budget and national planning, Udoma Udo-Udoma and the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele.
Melaye said: “The finance minister has not only displayed gross incompetence on the job, she also lacks the basic and rudimentary grasp of economic fundamentals necessary to run a critical sector of the Nigerian economy like the finance ministry.
“It is time for her to go now and pave way for a qualified and experienced person to steer the Nigerian economy away from the dark woods it has sunk presently under her stewardship.”
About the Budget and national planning minister, the Kogi State senator said: “To be sure, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma is a very charismatic man, an accomplished lawyer, and a quintessential gentleman with a fairly untainted reputation.
“In everyday parlance, he is a good man.
“But the critical job of budget and national planning minister for a huge country like Nigeria, with her prevailing economic challenges requires much more than being a good man with a great personality.
“As a lawyer, accomplished in this field as he is, Udoma’s appointment to that position is nepotism taken to very ridiculous heights; and a classic case of putting round pegs in square holes. It will, and can never fit.
“It is akin to saddling a carpenter with a tailor’s responsibility. The outcome under the circumstances, as has become evidently clear, is bound to be catastrophic for the economy.
“President Buhari must therefore do the needful now by relieving Udoma of this huge burden that is constituting a clog to the revival of the Nigerian economy,” he said.
Melaye said the CBN governor was guilty of “policy flip-flops, summersaults and inconsistencies” which are clear evidences “of gross incompetence in the management of the nation’s fiscal and monetary policies.”
“The net effect of this inconceivable ineptitude on the part of Emefiele is the free fall in the value of the naira and the total loss of faith and confidence by the international community on the Nigerian economy,” he said.
Melaye advised president Buhari to “immediately transit from mere rhetoric to drastic but positive action to save the economy and Nigeria from total collapse.”
“The hunger in the land is real, pervasive, widespread and debilitating for the poor masses.
“I was a permanent fixture at the All Progressive Congress,APC’s, Presidential campaign rallies and events, functioning mostly as the Master of Ceremonies..
“I am a proud APC Member, a party bonafide with a great stake in the success or failure of this administration, so no one can accuse me of sour grapes or meddlesomeness.
“As I walk the streets of my constituency these days, I constantly harbor a foreboding that I could be stoned by my angry constituents for the failure of Mr President to fulfill his campaign promises and expectations to Nigerians.
“Nigeria is tottering on a dangerous precipice, sliding perilously to a certain catastrophe if the current economic malaise is not halted immediately,” he stated.