• Secretary insists government in charge
• 500 MDAs led by acting managers

Failure to appoint substantive chief executives for critical agencies of government, one year after their boards were dissolved, is impeding progress, officials have said.

But Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, insists that governance is on course and that government is only being circumspect in making appointments for very important offices to achieve President Muhammadu Buhari’s socio-economic targets.

Senior civil servants told The Guardian that the president’s recent action in finding quick replacement for five CEOs 24 hours after they were sacked from the health ministry was unprecedented and in contrast with government’s antecedents on such matters.

The President had announced the dissolution of Governing Boards of Federal Parastatals, Agencies and Institutions on July 16, 2015 and the removal of CEOs/managing directors of 26 federal agencies, about eight months after assuming office, and ordered the most senior directors to take over leadership of the agencies.

Secretary Lawal, however, said that government was ‘sparingly’ replacing the sacked executives with new substantive heads one after another. Experts say allowing some heads of the government ministries, departments and agencies to stay on, despite having removed their counterparts, means that government is giving them an opportunity to key into its new direction. This is more so as The Guardian exclusively reported that five heads of critical health agencies, were recently removed and replaced immediately, because some donor agencies complained of financial misapplication and systemic inefficiency.

There are over 500 other government MDAs, many of which are led by managers in acting capacity, either due to the removal or expiration of tenure of former executives as government has yet to appoint substantive leaderships.

Asked why it took government so long to appoint substantive heads to the many federal boards, SGF Lawal explained that it was not the first time Nigeria would be experiencing such a delay. He, however, stressed that the desire of the Buhari government was to ensure that the right people were given the opportunity to serve. He also explained the need to appropriately apportion slots to party loyalists as well as effectively reflect federal character in allocating the slots. According to him, the large number of MDAs means that the job could not be done in a day or even in a month.

“It took some of the previous governments two years to make board appointments. “Now, the issue of board appointments is moving faster than in previous governments.

“We need to do it very diligently. Up until September, only the president and vice president were running the country and their hands were too full for them to get engaged in board appointments. Then the SGF, Chief of Staff and quite some few others came on board, and it is the OSGF that co-ordinates all of these.

“The president approved the setting up of a committee late last year to do this. The first thing the committee did was to set up criteria for people who would merit being on a board in an APC government,” he said.

Samuel Adelakan, a public affairs analyst, said the country suffers a great loss when critical appointments are delayed. “Some of the MDAs,” he said, “enjoy funding from donor agencies, and these international agencies can only bring in their money if they can trust the leadership.

“They negotiate based on mutual understanding with the agency, if they find out that the leadership is not substantive, as it is now in many agencies, they would be reluctant to commit their funds. This also has negative effect on the economy, because the money somehow circulates, with the attending multiplier effect. Some of the acting DGs and CEOs are doing well. So the government can use such people, by making their appointments permanent,” he said.

A source at the Office of the SGF told The Guardian that politicians have been lobbying to be placed on lucrative boards.