Concerned residents in Ebonyi say they expect much from the ministers designate when they are assigned portfolios, especially those that will handle critical ministries.
In separate interviews with Newsmen on Tuesday in Abakaliki, some of the residents commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the personalities he nominated to form the cabinet of the present administration.
They also appealed to Buhari to assign portfolios based on areas of comparative advantage to enable the incoming ministers to perform well.
Prof .Eugene Nweke, the Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, Ebonyi State University, commended the president for the calibre of personalities he had chosen to work with.
Nweke, while congratulating the ministers designate, called on them to eschew politics and ethnic differences so that they could collectively work to enunciate policies that would fast track development.
He urged the reappointed ministers, who were said to have under-performed in the first term, to leverage on the second appointment to improve.
The don urged the incoming ministers to focus on policy action that would promote political inclusiveness, human capital development, security and developmental education.
Similarly, Mr Jeremiah Onyibe, Secretary of Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Ebonyi chapter, urged Buhari not to hesitate to remove from office any minister that was found wanting in performance.
Onyibe said that the rights group would work in synergy with other rights organisations and civil society groups to maintain oversight functions on the performance of the ministers.
“We will not hesitate to mobilise Nigerians and demand for immediate resignation of any minister who is not discharging the mandate of his office to the overall benefits of the citizens.
“Again, we appeal to the president to ensure that portfolios are assigned to the ministers according to their capacity and area of advantage’’, Oyibe said.
Mr Lawrence Onwe, a lawyer and chieftain of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), called on the incoming ministers to see their appointments as divine call to serve the people and not opportunity to loot public treasury.
“The president, in his wisdom, has chosen the appointees as those who will assist him to achieve his development goals and we have to support and pray for them to succeed.
“My appeal is that they divest themselves of corrupt tendencies and not to divert public funds at their disposal to their personal accounts.
“One of the cardinal agenda of the present administration is war against corruption, hence Nigerians will not hesitate to call for the head of any minister discovered to have corruptly enriched himself from the public fund’’, Onwe said.
He, however, regretted that the president did not choose his ministers across party divide in order to pick from the best brains from the other political parties.
However, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ebonyi who preferred to speak on condition of anonymity said that Nigerians should not expect miracle from the incoming ministers, noting that nothing significant would come out from them.
He noted that the public outcry that trailed the list of the ministerial nominees was clear indication of rejection by Nigerians of most of the personalities chosen by the president to serve as ministers.