Nigeria may spend more on personnel cost, as Tinubu set record for highest ‘ministerial nominees’ since ’99 

With the new nineteen [19] named ministerial nominees submitted to the Senate by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila on Wednesday, the number of ministerial nominees will make a total of 47. 

Last week, Tinubu nominated 28 people to be cleared by the senate to be ministers in his cabinet submitted by his Chief of Staff and former Speaker of the House Of Representatives. 

With 47 nominees, President Bola Tinubu has passed his predecessors to set a record as a president with the highest number of ministerial nominees since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999.

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News Round The Clock, NRTC, gathered that with the new record, the country’s total remuneration, in cash or kind, payable by an employer to an employee in return for work done by the latter during the reference period may crescendo. 

Since 2016, personnel costs have kept soaring higher and in a proposed 2022 budget, according to the budget implementation report of the Federal Government, the amount budgeted for personnel costs increased from N2.29tn spent in 2019 to N4.11tn.

This shows a double increase is probable following Tinubu’s new record — there is no greenlight that the personnel cost will go down.

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The road to a new record 

Immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, during his first tenure appointed 36 ministers and increased it to 42 in his second term.

In the same vein, Goodluck Jonathan nominated 33 to be his cabinet ministers in 2011. They include nine people from the Umar Yar’Adua administration.

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Before his death, Yar’Adua in 2007 named 39 ministers for his cabinet [32 men and seven women].

More so, former president Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 named 42 nominees to be ministers but later reduced the number of ministries and ministers to 27 and 40, respectively, before his tenure elapsed in 2007.

NRTC gathered that Tinubu went beyond Buhari with five more nominees as well as Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan to set a new record in the country’s 24-year democratic rule.

^{You can access the full ministerial nominees names here,} Nyesom Wike, 27 others make Tinubu’s Ministerial list, Oyetola, Lalong, Bagudu, 16 others make Tinubu’s second ministerial list