Until President Muhammadu Buhari cuts the Abdulrasheed Maina Gordian knot, the controversy over his reinstatement will continue to expand until it consumes more public officials. Hopefully, the president will summon the will to cut the knot soon. For a controversy that began almost surreptitiously, it is indeed baffling that the jobs of top government officials are on the line. Mr Maina, Chairman of the defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, had been sacked by the Goodluck Jonathan government in 2013 when his committee got embroiled in the financial malfeasances it was supposed to curb in pension administration. Since then he had been bidding his time, a virtual fugitive from the law after he was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Suddenly, a few weeks ago, the country woke up to discover that Mr Maina had been recalled, reinstated, transferred to the Interior ministry, and promoted. On top of these measures, his campaign posters littered Borno State where he was suspected to be interested in vying for the 2019 governorship race. It was not only Borno State that was disquieted, even the federal civil service was ill at ease over his surreptitious and defiant reinstatement, not to say promotion. After a media storm broke out in consequence, inter-agency turf wars between the EFCC and the Department of State Service (DSS) also followed immediately. Soon, the dual inter-agency wars expanded to become a tripartite war with the office of the Head of Service dragged in. And by the time details of Mr Maina’s reinstatement became public knowledge, reports soon indicated that more than three agencies were involved. There was, in fact, a fourth, the Interior ministry, and a fifth, the Justice ministry.
At the last count, the heads of the affected agencies and ministries were hardly on talking terms. The public always knew that many of the agencies under President Buhari had a difficult relationship with one another. But no one knew the scale, nor how disturbing it had become, nor how fraught with terrible repercussions the rivalries really were. Now, tempers are much more inflamed, and reconciliation almost impossible. For what began as a mere inter-agency rivalry, with its disconcerting administrative connotations, quickly metamorphosed into a deeply emotive and personal animosity. More damagingly, the rivalry now laid bare the divisions that have bifurcated the Buhari presidency in unprecedented ways. Roughly speaking, the Justice and Interior ministries are on one side together with the DSS and possibly one or two close aides of the president; while on the other side is the EFCC together, it seems, with the public, particularly the media and civil society organisations.
Had the war broken out privately and fought behind closed doors, reconciliation might conceivably be possible and even easy. But it is being fought garishly in the open, before gleeful, giggling public, and to the immense satisfaction of interested stakeholders adamant about bloodshed. How the president hopes to forge reconciliation is hard to see, especially with the Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita, becoming collaterally riled by the expanding nature of the conflict. As the war intensifies, with occasional lulls in the fight, the character of each of the combatants comes out in sharp relief. The DSS has maintained its cynical posture, its comments intermittently laced with deep and mystifying sarcasm. When the EFCC was quoted as saying it had no knowledge of the presence of Mr Maina in the country, the DSS scoffed that “Maina had been in the country for some time and it would be absurd for someone who should know to claim ignorance of his being around.”
The Interior ministry, hitherto unused to the brutal jousting of the armed agencies, has waffled and quibbled to no end, sometimes clumsily and unprofessionally passing the buck to other agencies, despite being in the thick of the conspiracy that saw the reinstatement of the luckless pension reforms boss. The ministry simply suggested, armed with relevant letters, that the Civil Service Commission transferred Mr Maina to the Interior ministry. After first claiming that it based its actions in the whole saga on court judgements, the Justice ministry, the originator of the offending reinstatement and transfer letters, later indicated that the time to speak was yet to come. It probably hoped that the controversy would die down if more information was not released. That has not happened because the Head of Service, fearing the matter would sooner rather than later come to a head, had taken the precaution of alerting the president to the dangers and damage Mr Maina’s recall could cause the presidency. The warnings obviously went unheeded.
Mrs Oyo-Ita’s letter indicating the appropriate steps she said she took on the controversy has leaked to the public and triggered a fresh firestorm of its own. The letter seemed to indict the president as well as question the ethics of a few agency and ministerial heads involved in the recall and reinstatement saga. The leakage, rather than the wordings of the letter, has pitted the Chief of Staff to the president, Abba Kyari, against Mrs Oyo-Ita. No one knows how the bitter peripheral quarrels around the president will end, for those arrayed in battle against Mr Magu of the EFCC are many and powerful, regardless of standing on shaky ethical grounds in the unfortunate affair. The turf wars began almost immediately the president’s team was constituted, and Mr Magu was nominated for the EFCC job. The Maina reinstatement is simply one battle in a fratricidal war that seems fated to endure till the closing days of the Buhari presidency, whether in a four-year tenure or eight-year tenure.
Few analysts will confidently suggest that Mr Magu’s EFCC can easily triumph in the ongoing turf wars, especially given the small support he enjoys in the presidency where he has tended to operate like a loner. The armada against him in the presidency may not be anchored on the ethical high ground, but they have the number, closeness to the presidency, and a more coherent and strategic vision of what they intend to do with the enormous power and influence at their command. They have apparently sacrificed Mr Maina a second time, but will protect him for as long as it seems possible and feasible. To save their heads, if it comes to that, they will even offer his scalp to the EFCC. But they are unlikely to relent or to forget how Mr Magu irreverently put them on the spot. They will bid their time to return the favour if the president does not pre-empt them by finding the courage to do a total clear-out.
Mr Magu has spoken confidently of the immutability of his position on the Maina saga. But like he has always done, he has not spoken discretely and diplomatically in a manner that would not offend his enemies or alert them to the danger his appointment to the EFCC throne constitutes to their offices and existence. If he is yet to be confirmed by the Senate, and is hardly loved in the presidency, at least among those closer to the president than he is, it is because he thinks wisdom is incompatible with the strength of his position, the ethical high ground he occupies. For a very sensitive and public post as the EFCC, it is to be assumed that there would always be some tension among presidential appointees, particularly those who are less than straightforward in their financial dealings. But in this case, the animosities between Mr Magu and other presidential aides have reached a boiling point. If the president won’t do it for them, and the appointees themselves are reluctant to quieten the storm, perhaps the uncompromising Mr Magu can find a way to lower the temperature.
If the turf wars were not deliberately programmed by the presidency to help check power aggrandisement by a few individuals or groups within the presidency, then the combatants must all recognise that the public impression about the presidency is quite unflatteringly one of dissonance, disorganisation and paralysis. This impression is unhelpful to the image of the president and his presidency. Mr Maina is unlikely to ever come back to his position or even the civil service. He has left quite a lot of upheavals and destruction in his wake. Mr Magu, on the other hand, is unlikely to vanquish his enemies in the presidency. He must therefore find a way of working with them. Because he was not replaced by a fresh nominee when it could easily and plausibly have been done, he is also unlikely to be vanquished by his enemies, regardless of his impetuousness. His enemies must find a way to ignore his provocations, as much as they can try, and even humour him when the spirit seizes them. If the president is to cut the Gordian knot and put an end to the rancour and rigmarole in his government, it will have to be on a spur he himself will in future be unable to explain. Cutting the knot will come in the shape of a total clear-out and entirely fresh replacements. But it is hard for the president’s idiosyncrasy to either instigate or accommodate such a tectonic measure.
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