Mrs Dora Akunyili, minister of information and communications, is the beautiful face of the Yar’Adua administration. And I mean that literally and not figuratively. Her smiling face at official functions masks how she must feel about the terrible state of affairs in the country, just as it also belies the difficulty of her own task working with politicians. Working in this government cannot be easy for this woman with a no-nonsense approach to things, I suspect. Like the Amazons of the Obasanjo era, something about Akunyili suggests she wants to leave her mark in government. What is not clear is whether it will be the right or wrong mark.

A nugget of news about her caught my attention a couple of weeks ago and I am still trying to make some sense of it. There had been what I would refer to as a turf war between the minister and her deputy Ikra Bilbis. It was an open secret that the two didn’t see eye to eye and President Yar’Adua decided the best thing for him to do to sort out the problems between them would be to share the schedule of responsibilities in the ministry between the two. The Secretary to Government Yayale Ahmed gave Akunyili the leadership role in the ministry as she is expected to provide overall leadership and guidance for the attainment of its goals and objectives.

In reality and as spelt out by the schedule prepared on behalf of government by the SGF, Akunyili’s primary task is to attend to the information aspect of her ministry. Her minister of state is expected to oversee “the regulation of the postal and telecommunications industries of the country, including licencing frequencies for telecommunications.” He will also oversee the Nigerian Telecommuni-cations Commission, NCC.

From the goings on in the ministry of information and communications in the past year, it is clear that the main problem for Akunyili has been in communications where she has tried to assert her authority based on her vision of the progress that ought to be made by the sector. When she became minister she practically read the riot act to the GSM operators in the country because of the terrible services they were providing Nigerians at the time. She asked the NCC to enforce rigorously the rules and regulations relating to service delivery and also asked the GSM operators to reduce call tariffs or face sanctions.

Her perception, rightly or wrongly, was that the NCC, as the regulator of the sector, was not pulling its weight and was probably “sleeping with the enemy.” She wanted a better deal for Nigerians and she didn’t mind stepping on toes to get it. Some people believed at the time that she was naive to think she could make any dramatic progress on tariff reduction, particularly because of the operational challenges faced by the GSM companies who have to spend billions of Naira on diesel (in the absence of electricity) to power their base stations scattered across the county. But Akunyili, who had done her homework on the profitability of mobile phone operations in the country, had her answer.  “We have made efforts to put these challenges into context, and can safely say that tariffs should be reduced. To this end, it is our resolve to pursue strategies that can lead to the creation of an efficient telecommunications sector based on fair competition, service quality and low tariffs. We also intend to implement policies that will make tariff and billing within the market more competitive,” she said.

She was later to join battle with Ernest Ndukwe, NCC boss, over a licencing round involving the sale of 2.3GHz frequencies that she felt did not meet the required due process and rule of law test.  It was a battle that was fought relentlessly and publicly by both sides until the president intervened on the side of the minister and asked the licencing round to be cancelled and redone. By intervening on the side of the minister, I had believed that the president was giving her his full support to shake up the communications side of her ministry and get some concessions for long suffering Nigerians from the mobile telephony operators.

What is not clear to me is how yanking the biggest parastatal in the ministry from her and giving it to her junior minister is an indication of presidential confidence in her ability. It seems to me she has been put in her place despite her ill-defined assignment to provide leadership and guidance for the achievements of the ministry’s goals. What she is effectively left with is being the pretty face of this government, making public statements on its behalf and chairing press briefing sessions of ministers of government. Even her other pet project, the much vilified rebranding of Nigeria, is moribund. It is not backed with any new money, a clear indication that the president, who should be the biggest supporter of project, is not committed to it.

In a previous piece I did on the rebranding project, I had wondered aloud about why she wanted to be minister, particularly in an administration that seems so clearly overwhelmed that it is practically out of its depth. But here in our dear country, having a ministerial title on your resume is something to be celebrated. What you achieve or can achieve with it is secondary. My fear is that this fantastic lady would someday, in sober reflection, find she has wasted her time believing she could make a difference in this government. It would be a great pity.

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