Tinubu’s ministers not doing enough on public enlightenment, says Idi Farouk

A former Director-General of National Orientation Agency (NOA), Alhaji Idi Farouk, says the programmes and policies of President Bola Tinubu needed to be amplified more for Nigerians to understand better.

Farouk maintained that Mr President’s appointees, particularly ministers, who needed to bridge the communication gap, were not doing enough.

Farouk stated these in an interview with the newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja.

When asked to assess the Tinubu-led administration in the past 18 months, he said there was the need for the appointees, particularly ministers, to step up their games on sensitisation on government’s policies and programmes.

“There are certain things that the government is doing that we do not know about and that brings me back to the issue of public enlightenment, educating the populace and even giving right orientation.

“When people don’t know what your actions are, they are bound to give you a fail mark.

“I sympathise with the president because when I heard him talking on the national broadcast on the ‘Endbadgovernance’ issue, he reeled out so many things that his administration had done and that is why I feel for him.

“What are his ministers doing? If the ministers are doing their tasks, we won’t just be hearing it from the president.

“You know this issue of blowing your trumpet. All of us have trumpets; if you don’t blow it; it’s only the one that is being blown that people will hear.

“It seems to me that while there are some good things, there are also some things that are not so good to the citizens,’’ he said.

Farouk, who described Tinubu as his friend, advised him to listen more to the people while continuing with his critical economic reforms and actions.

“The president should listen more through the feedback mechanism such as NOA, the Ministry of Information and National Orientation and personal aides who feed him with information from ordinary citizens,” he said.

Farouk, also a former commissioner for information in Kaduna State, also advised the president to look into the number of his media aides, saying ‘too many cooks spoil the pots’.

On the recent appointments and cabinet reshuffle by Tinubu, he advised the president to go deeper and look into the activities of some ministers who were not performing.

“If I am the president, some of the ministers would not have retained their appointments, though some are doing very well, while some need to be kicked out.

“Whether you like him or not, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesome Wike, understands his mandate to administer the affairs of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

“I can also say that for the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo; he is equally working because I travel a lot, and I have observed great jobs done by the minister.

“But I know all of us here will fail the test if I ask you to give me the names of all the ministers in this government and their offices.

“As a minister and the chief advisor to Mr President on every issue of your ministry, you have to be seen to be fully in charge and doing things well. That’s why the operations of some of them are robbing negatively on the president because they are not talking.

“This job is not for you alone; it’s a job for you to work and be seen to be working, in the interest of Nigerians,’’ he said.

Farouk said that if he was the president, the former minister of sports would not retain his job, and the minister of power too, due to the incessant collapse of national grids.

He said that the recent appointment of Dr Daniel Bwala as one of the president’s media spokesmen portrayed Tinubu as very forgiving one.

He said, if he was the president, he would just accept Bwala back as a friend, but not to appoint him into his government.

The former director-general recalled that Bwala used to be a very strong stalwart of All Progressives Congress (APC) but left Tinubu for Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) due to his choice of Muslim-Muslim ticket.

“I heard some people saying he could have been a mole in the PDP. No, that was correct; even if he was a mole, he overran the runway because nobody had done so much damage or tried to do so much damage to the character of Tibunu than Bwala.

“That is why I say he (Tinubu) is a long-suffering person; so the beneficiary of this appointment is not Bwala, but Mr President.

“As a matter of fact, how will Bwala come back to talk to the Muslim community that he so much despised because of the choice of the vice president?

“How can he now also be trusted by the Christian community who saw him as a defender of the faith? How can he be trusted because Nigeria has Muslims and Christians?

“But, like I said, the greatest beneficiary (of Bwala’s appointment) is Mr President because we now see him as a long-suffering and forgiving person,’’ he said.