Jonathan shouldn’t have more than 15 ministers

Constitutional lawyer, Prof. Itse Sagay, has supported the recommendation made by the National Conference to reduce the number of ministers in the federal cabinet. However, Sagay said the maximum number of ministers President Goodluck Jonathan should have should be 15 instead of the 18 recommended by the conference.

The conference had said last week that the constitution, which makes it mandatory for the President to appoint at least one minister from all the 36 states, should be amended while ministers should be picked along the six geo-political lines instead.

However, Sagay said most of the ministerial portfolios were irrelevant but were only constituted by the Presidency to employ politicians for ulterior motives.

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria maintained that the cost of governance in the country was too high and one of the ways to address this problem was to scrap over 20 ministerial portfolios.

He said ministers of state were irrelevant but were given too much money to play with to the extent that some of them are probably richer than senators.

“The constitution is flawed because it states that all the 36 states must have a minister but this is wasteful because that is why irrelevant portfolios are being created. In my own opinion, we don’t need more than 15 ministers. Even the United States that has a bigger economy and structure than us has less than 23 secretaries (ministers),” he said.

Sagay, who disclosed in 2010 that senators earned N240m in salary and allowances said, “From what I even gather, ministers are competing with senators in terms of earnings. What is the relevance of a minister of state? He is just a deputy to another minister and yet he has so much money at his disposal. Look at the Minister of State for Defence, Musliu Obanikoro, for instance, he has no job other than using the military to harass people like he did during the Ekiti election.

“Over 80 per cent of our budget goes to recurrent expenditure and this means we have to cut down on the cost of governance, it is too high. Let the money be used in building hospitals and developing infrastructure instead of employing politicians as ministers.”

Sagay, however, berated the delegates at the conference for recommending the creation of more states, adding that it was at variance with the resolve of the delegates to reduce the cost of governance.

He said the creation of more states would increase poverty and insecurity. He said most of the states in existence were not economically viable and the creation of more states would create a huge burden on the Federal Government which funds these states with oil money.