With President Bola Tinubu’s second anniversary in office barely a week away, the Central Results Delivery and Coordination Unit is racing to present him a fresh set of ministerial scorecards, multiple presidency sources told The KUKURUKU on Tuesday.
The scorecards will focus on the performance of the various ministries for the first quarter of 2025 as Tinubu’s administration enters its mid-term on May 29.
The confidential assessment, which covers the first quarter of 2025, is expected “any time from now,” one aide said, adding that under-performing ministries are already feeling the heat of renewed scrutiny.
The CDCU, an agency under the Presidency responsible for assessing ministers’ performance quarterly, is currently verifying performance reports of the various government ministries and assigning them scores, the official added.
Sources familiar with the exercise said each ministry uploaded evidence of projects and policy milestones to a secure CDCU portal last month.
Since then, a verification team led by the Unit’s head, Hadiza Bala-Usman, has been poring over the submissions and assigning scores against the performance bonds ministers signed at the October 2023 cabinet retreat.
The officials, who chose to speak on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk about the matter, disclosed that Bala-Usman is working to transmit the reports to the President’s desk as soon as possible.
Asked about the assessment of some prominent cabinet members, an insider described the performance of many ministers as average, noting that only a few of them scored above average.
“The one minister who has done fairly well is the minister of works and a few others. When you look at the assessment of several others, they performed poorly in several critical metrics,” the official stated.
Even though the President is not expected to take any immediate action on the performance of any minister or ministry, the report is expected to provide Tinubu with the most up-to-date information on the performances of his cabinet members.
The information, sources said, will also help the President to engage some of his cabinet members or ministers on areas of improvement when necessary.
A top Presidency source close to the development said, “Officials of the various ministries have uploaded the reports of their activities and projects on the portal provided by the CDCU. These are based on deliverables that the ministries themselves have set.
“Officials of CDCU have done their detailed verifications and assessments of the uploaded projects. Scores have been assigned based on their findings. The final report for all the ministries is meant for the President.”
At the opening of the three-day Cabinet Retreat for Ministers, Presidential Aides, Permanent Secretaries and top government functionaries on November 1, 2023, President Tinubu said ministers in his cabinet would only retain their offices based on performance, which would be reviewed quarterly.
“If you are performing, nothing to fear. If you miss the objective, we’ll review it. If no performance, you leave us. No one is an island, and the buck stops on my desk,” said the President.
In October 2024, the President rejigged his cabinet, and some ministers were asked to leave while others were reassigned to other portfolios.
The CDCU’s dossier was credited with informing the shake-up that led to the swapping of portfolios and resulted in the removal of two underperforming ministers after just 16 months in office.
The CDCU was established in June 2023, when Tinubu appointed Bala Usman, a former Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, as Special Adviser on Policy and Coordination.
Modelled on similar delivery units in the United Kingdom and Rwanda, its mandate is to track key performance indicators, publish quarterly dashboards and flag red-line projects for presidential intervention.
On October 17, 2023, Bala-Usman announced that her unit would begin transmitting quarterly reports to the President from January 2024, as all ministries had received their budgets for the 2024 fiscal year by then.
“We’re looking to commence an assessment of the respective ministries in January 2024. We’re going to have a quarterly assessment of performance, which would culminate in an annual scorecard,” the former NPA Chief explained in an interview on TVC.
That month, the unit trained at least 140 officials to track and assess the performance of federal ministries, departments and agencies.
The officers were drawn from 35 federal MDAs. They comprised a permanent secretary and directors of planning and other officials, four each from 35 ministries, officials told one of our correspondents.
Bala-Usman has repeatedly warned that the scorecards are more than academic.
At a media briefing in February 2025, she reminded ministers that “quarterly assessments will feed directly into presidential decisions,” noting that the Unit’s last report had already triggered “targeted conversations” and mid-term adjustments in at least three ministries.
“If your deliverables are slipping, the data will show it,” she said then.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party, and Labour Party have criticised the President and his ministers over allegations of poor governance.
