Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, has assured Nigerians that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) would be duly constituted unlike the scenario in 2015, where it was delayed.
Speaking in an interview, Adesina noted that the state of affairs is different from 2015, when it took six months for the president to announce his ministers and some other aides.
“The circumstances are not the same.
“Nigerians will not have to wait a day longer than necessary before they have a cabinet,” Adesina told The Interview.
“And as the president himself has said, the process won’t take as long as it did in 2015, because the circumstances are not the same.”
Despite Adesina’s assurance, President Buhari has not announced or forwarded the name of his ministerial nominees to the National Assembly 27 days after he was inaugurated as the country’s leader for a second term of four years.
He has made only three appointments – Mele Kyari as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and the renewal of the appointments of Ahmed Idris as the Accountant-General of the Federation and Godwin Emefiele as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) respectively.
Asked about the escalating security crisis in Nigeria, Adesina stated that the problems have been inherent from the era of the country’s rule under colonial administrators in 1914.
The presidential aide admitted that the security situation was “dire”, but stated that the Buhari-led administration is working round the clock to put an end to the menace.
Adesina said: “It was an unwilling union, forcefully consummated by Lord Frederick Lugard. Since then, it had been uneasy, with grave suspicion rifling through the polity.
“It was not helped by the colonial masters themselves, who played one ethnic nationality against the other, to serve their own interests.
“These tensions spiked in recent times, particularly with the advent of democracy, in which people could make utterances, however indecorous or divisive they may be.
“The security challenges are enormous. Insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, communal strife, criminality generally. These are truly dire times, and as the president has said, they are results of the corruption, decay and neglects of the past.
“But is the government overwhelmed? By no means. The challenges are being tackled, and we will eventually overcome. Nigeria is greater than the challenges, no matter the hidden hostile hands that are encouraging them.”
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