The Nigerian Senate confirmed acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s 38 cabinet nominees Wednesday, including a managing director of Goldman Sachs’ London office, effectively sealing Mr. Jonathan’s place at the helm of Africa’s second-biggest economy.
The cabinet overhaul provides further stability to Nigeria, which was left largely rudderless since ailing President Umaru Yar’adua fell out of public view in November and spent 2½ months out of the country for medical treatment. Vice President Jonathan’s appointment as acting president in February was initially resisted by those close to Mr. Yar’adua, who returned to Nigeria later in the month.
“Goodluck is the only game in town,” said Sam Amadi, head of policy at Nigerian lobby group the Good Governance Group.
Wednesday’s confirmations appeared in part aimed to satisfy the Yar’adua camp: Mr. Jonathan’s retooled cabinet included about a dozen reappointed members from his predecessor’s cabinet as well as Murtala Yar’adua, a nephew of Mr. Yar’adua.
It remains unclear exactly what portfolio the younger Mr. Yar’adua or others will take. Nigeria’s Senate approves cabinet nominees, who are only later assigned portfolios.
The key position of finance minister is widely expected to fall to Nigeria-born investment banker Segun Aganga, managing director in hedge funds at Goldman Sachs since 2003.
Mr. Aganga, who has maintained close ties to Nigeria, is considered likely to back transparency and anticorruption efforts, say those who know him. Mr. Jonathan, in recent speeches, has set out an ambitious reform agenda for the troubled oil-rich nation.
Mr. Amadi and other observers caution that while Mr. Jonathan will enjoy public support, he will be hard pressed to pursue ambitious reform goals with a team that is largely made up of familiar Nigerian political figures. “The hope of transformation is almost lost,” Mr. Amadi said.
Mr. Jonathan also appears to have little time to work. An informal but closely followed agreement among ruling-party leaders stipulates that power must shift between politicians from Nigeria’s Muslim north and predominantly Christian south every eight years. Mr. Yar’Adua, from the north, is serving his first four-year term, giving the north a presumed second turn in elections due in early 2011. Mr. Jonathan is from the south.
The polls are already contentious. Thousands of protesters marched in Abuja, the capital, on Wednesday, demanding election reform ahead of the vote. Demonstrators urged authorities not to give the head of the country’s National Electoral Commission, Maruice Iwu, a new term ahead of next year’s elections.
Mr. Iwu’s five-year tenure ends in June. Many opposition politicians and organizations have called for his removal or nonrenewal of his mandate; recent polls have been criticized by local and foreign observers.
Mr. Jonathan’s key cabinet appointment is Mr. Aganga, the Goldman executive, who is expected to be named finance minister. “I doubt if someone at his level would come back just to be the [junior] finance minister,” Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said in an interview.
Mr. Aganga would be taking control of a shaky economy. Nigeria is almost wholly dependent on oil exports and still recovering from low oil prices. A banking sector crisis in 2009 led to a $4 billion bailout of nine banks last summer. The country’s stock market, once among the world’s best performing, was among the world’s worst performing in 2009.
Those who know Mr. Aganga say he would help bring some credibility back to a banking system that has been on the mend. Under Mr. Sanusi, the central bank chief, the government has released the names of top debtors to the bailed-out banks, a list that included some of the wealthiest and most high-profile Nigerians. Mr. Sanusi said he would expect Mr. Aganga to back his transparency and anticorruption efforts. “He would support everything we’re doing to restore confidence in the banking system,” Mr. Sanusi said.
Despite his time abroad, Mr. Aganga has maintained close ties to Nigeria. He founded an influential leadership group, the Nigerian Leadership Initiative, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and is a board member of TechnoServe, a Washington-based nonprofit that works with entrepreneurs in developing economies, including Nigeria.
He took the obligations seriously, say his supporters. Bismark Rewane, a financial analyst in Lagos who was a member of a Nigerian capital-markets reform committee with Mr. Aganga, said Mr. Aganga flew in from London weekly for 12 consecutive weeks for the committee meetings.
“He is a clear thinker and had a vision of where he wanted to take capital-market reform,” said Mr. Rewane.
At a conference of Nigerian professionals in London last year, Mr. Aganga reminisced about his childhood and his desire to bring change to his home country. “Any behavior that would bring disrepute to the family was completely unacceptable,” he said in a speech. “It was a taboo to steal; it was a bigger taboo to be known to be corrupt.”
His childhood lessons, he suggested, could guide his country forward. “For decades and decades we all failed to take responsibility,” he said. “But we can fix it, and we can fix it now.”