UPDATED Tinubu to reshuffle cabinet – Presidency

"The President has given an order to all his ministers at the last Federal Executive Council meeting to go out there and speak about the activities of his administration."

President Tinubu will reshuffle his cabinet and may do so before 1st October, his spokesperson has said.

“The President has expressed his desire to reshuffle his cabinet and he will do it. I don’t know whether he wants to do it before October 1 and he will surely do it. That is what I will say, but he has not given us any timeline,” spokesperson Bayo Onanuga told journalists on Wednesday.

Some ministers are expected to be dropped while some may be moved to other ministries.

Mr Onanuga added that the “President has given an order to all his ministers at the last Federal Executive Council meeting to go out there and speak about the activities of his administration.”

“Some of them have been media shy, television shy, radio shy, and he wants them to overcome all that and go out there and speak about what they have been doing.

“Because the feeling out there is that the government is not doing enough and the government has been doing a lot. And it is up to them to go out there and blow their own trumpet. They should go out there and talk about what their ministries have been doing,” Mr Onanuga said.

The Nigerian leader appointed 45 ministers in August 2023 out of the 48 he had sent to the Senate. Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, former acting governor of Taraba State Abubakar Danladi, and Stella Okete from Delta State were the three who did not pass the confirmation process, with the Senate stating that the nominees had not secured security clearance.

Mr Tinubu has had one of the largest Federal Executive Councils since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999. The Council usually includes special advisers, 20 of whom the Senate approved for the president.

It is unclear what the reshuffle will be like. But already, the president’s cabinet has drawn criticism from some Nigerians who are concerned by the high cost of governance.

A PREMIUM TIMES analysis showed that politics appeared to be the dominant consideration in the cabinet selection, even though many of the nominees have glittering academic and professional records that ordinarily qualify them for high public offices.

President Tinubu won a narrow victory in last year’s presidential election. His 37 per cent of votes cast is the lowest share of the votes that has put a Nigerian president in office since Shehu Shagari in 1979.