Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari names cabinet after long delay

Lagos — Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has named a 43-member cabinet, with Zainab Ahmed returning to the finance ministry and newcomer Timipre Sylva heading up the key state petroleum ministry.

The appointments come six months after Buhari won re-election in a February vote disputed by the opposition. The newly formed government faces the challenge of implementing development plans to reverse mounting poverty in the country of 200-million at a time of declining government revenue. Buhari was criticised for his slow response to the country’s economic crisis and reluctance to implement market reforms in his first term.

Here are the key members of Buhari’s team:

• Zainab Ahmed: First appointed to the finance portfolio in September 2018, Ahmed replaced Kemi Adeosun, who resigned. She’ll add the budget and planning ministries to her portfolio, making her one of the most powerful ministers in the cabinet. Ahmed will be seeking to boost government revenue, with plans in the offing to raise value-added tax to 7% from 5%, while taming burgeoning public debt now estimated at more than $80bn.

• Timipre Sylva: Buhari retains the petroleum portfolio, as was the case in his first term, only ceding the junior petroleum minister of state position to Sylva, a former governor of Bayelsa state in the oil-rich Niger River delta, to oversee the day-to-day management regulatory and operational responsibilities. It will be a challenge for the new minister to uphold the uneasy truce with militants in the region, which is necessary to ensure a steady flow of oil revenue.

• Saleh Mamman: The energy ministry is to be a standalone under Mamman after the first four years when it was run jointly with works and housing, leaving the country still a poor electricity producer. The government considers solving the country’s power problems key to expanding economic growth.

• Rotimi Amaechi:  Amaechi retains the transport portfolio he handled in Buhari’s first term. His primary work will be to oversea the revamp and expansion of the country’s moribund railways, considered imperative for the diversification of the economy away from oil dependence by boosting the movement of agricultural and manufactured goods.

• Babatunde Fashola Freed from the challenge of solving Nigeria’s electricity problems, Fashola, who came to prominence as governor of Lagos state, is expected to focus more on expanding the country’s road infrastructure while working to reduce its huge housing deficit.

The Buhari administration enters its second term with the 10-year-old Boko Haram Islamist insurgency still raging in the country’s northeast, with new security threats, including a festering grazing conflict and widespread banditry, coming to the fore at a time almost half of the population is estimated to be living in poverty.

While the government has identified spending on infrastructure and social welfare programmes as vital to curbing poverty, it has repeatedly missed its revenue targets since Buhari was first elected to office in 2015, as the output and price of crude, the country’s main export, declined.

To make up for lost income, Nigeria increased its borrowing in recent years, leaving it with a debt-service burden that consumes more than 60% of its revenue, according to the finance ministry.

“We have designed a revenue-growth initiative that we have started implementing,” Ahmed told reporters Wednesday. “The whole of government will be geared toward improving our revenue.”

Bloomberg