Sack of Ministers: Jonathan has right to hire and fire – Activist

A human rights activist based in Onitsha, Anambra State, Comrade Emeka Umeagbalasi has said that the sacking of nine ministers by President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday, was within his powers. Umeagbalasi, who is the Chairman board of Trustees of International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law said Nigerians should concern themselves with the motive for the sack to know if it was done out of witch-hunt. He said Nigerians should not dwell on the basis of the action as the ministers had no tenure of office and could be sacked any day. According to Umeagbalasi, “It is within the rights of the president to appoint ministers, and in doing so, he must also appoint the ones that have integrity and would be able to carry out the job assigned them. “The sacking is not a problem; it can only be a case if the ministers are competent but sacked as a witch-hunt at the detriment of Nigerians. “Take for instance the case of the minister of education, she has not done anything remarkable in the sector to improve primary and secondary education, so why will the president not sack that kind of person. Foreign affairs minister is another case, he has not done much to propagate the foreign policies of the country. The killing of our people overseas, the Boko Haram killings and the Syrian crisis, what has he done? “These are things that are within the domain of the minister to speak up, to even go a step further by looking for a way to get the International Court of Justice to try these terrorists and jail them to make it serve as a deterrent to others. So if you look at the nine ministers removed, you will see that they have not really performed”. Umeagbalasi said that Nigerians should rather worry about who would be appointed to replace them rather than their removal, even though his organization has severally stood against the over-bloated number of Jonathan’s ministers, believing that his government is better off with the appointment of few but capable hands instead of using ministerial position as a sort of settlement for political jobbers.