• Falade: Politicians using security report to settle scores
• People under EFCC investigation part of Tinubu’s cabinet, Chidoka alleges
President Bola Tinubu yesterday, named Balarabe Abbas Lawal from Kaduna State as minister-nominee to replace former governor Nasir el-Rufai, who was earlier rejected by the Senate in August.
The one-time minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was one of the 48 persons nominated by President Tinubu as ministers when his name emerged in the first batch of 28 nominees forwarded to the National Assembly for approval on July 27.
Tinubu made the disclosure yesterday in a letter addressed to the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, which was read during Tuesday’s plenary.
The president, in the letter, asked the Senate to confirm Balarabe and two other ministerial nominees, Dr Jamila Bio Ibrahim and Ayodele Olawande to make up his earlier 48 cabinet list.
President Tinubu had in September approved the nominations of Ibrahim and Olawande to serve as the Minister of Youth and Minister of State for Youth respectively, pending their confirmation by the Senate.
Akpabio read Tinubu’s request thus: “In compliance with the provisions of section 147, sub-section 2 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, I am pleased to forward to the Senate three nominees for confirmation of Senate.
“Dr Jamila Biu Ibrahim, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, and Ayodele Olawale for confirmation as Ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. While I hope that this request will receive the usual expeditious consideration of the Senate, please accept the Distinguished Senate President and Distinguished Senators, the usual assurances of my highest regards.”
Akpabio, after reading the letter, said the request would be referred to the Committee of the Whole for an expeditious action at the next legislative date.
The lawmakers had in August, declined to confirm el-Rufai, Senator Abubakar Sani Danladi (Taraba State) and Stella Okotete (Delta State) citing security clearance.
Recall that Sunday Karimi, senator representing Kogi West, had presented a petition against el-Rufai during his screening. Subsequently, the Senate withheld his confirmation alongside Okotete and Sani, leaving Kaduna as the only state without a ministerial nominee in the new cabinet.
The development created mixed feelings, with sources saying the embarrassment made el-Rufai withdraw his ministerial interest and subsequently fly out of the country.
The new Kaduna minister-nominee had led a 65-man transition committee ahead of the swearing-in of Uba Sani, governor-elect, on May 29. The former secretary to Kaduna State government during el-Rufai’s administration also headed the transition committee of the state in 2015 and served as the vice-chairman of the committee in 2019.
Between September 1999 and February 2001, Balarabe worked as a Special Assistant to the Minister of Education in Abuja. Between February 2001 and May 2003, he worked as a Special Assistant to the Minister of State (Army) at the Ministry of Defence. He then worked as a Special Assistant to the President in the Federal Capital Territory and as the Chief of Staff to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja, among other positions held from July 2003 until July 2007.
Femi Falade, a public affairs analyst, in his reaction yesterday, raised some posers over Senate’s non-confirmation of some of Tinubu’s nominees.
He wrote: “The creeping deployment of security reports as a tool for political intrigue, as seen in the latest ministerial confirmation saga and the past case of Ibrahim Magu risks making an issue of public trust in the integrity of security reports. Politicians are being accused of cloaking, as security reports, innuendos and angst arising from political differences, ruptured friendships, failed marriages and even ill-fated dalliances.
“Akpabio shocked many Nigerians, especially given el-Rufai’s political standing. He is believed to have accepted el-Rufai’s nomination as minister only after considerable pressure from President Tinubu. His non-confirmation and two others, therefore raised questions about the entire screening process, who influenced it, the role of security agencies in it, and the options for redress by the persons of whom the purported security reports may have impugned. As the Senate resumed last week, it is yet to answer these questions or grapple with the implications of the constitutional provision, which deems a nominee to have been confirmed as minister, if no return is received from the Senate within 21 working days of receipt of his or her nomination.
“While the Senate was in recess, President Tinubu nominated two more ministers. The Senate is likely to conduct their screening this week. The expectation is that the Senate will be eager to clear up the issue once it resumes. But there are arguments by some people that el-Rufai, Okotete and Danladi are already deemed as confirmed ministers by virtue of Section 147 (6) of the Constitution, which states that ‘An appointment to any of the offices aforesaid shall be deemed to have been made where no return has been received from the Senate within 21 working days of the receipt of nomination by the Senate.
“Some aggrieved senators are alleging that external forces and personal interest influenced Akpabio’s action. Influential figures from the executive branch are believed to have pressured Mr Akpabio to block the confirmation of certain persons. In persuading the Senate president to act as they desired, the figures from the executive branch recalled a similar event during the Buhari years, when security reports from the Lawal Daura-led DSS, a parastatal of the executive branch, was used to thwart the confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC chairman.
“But unlike Magu’s case, no security agency has owned up to issuing any adverse report on President Tinubu’s nominees. There is yet to be any valid security issue about the concerned nominees made known and neither have the so-called petitions nor security reports been brought to their knowledge.
“For the health of the polity, politicians are advised to use other tools in their contestations, rather than imperil the objectivity of security reports and thereby devalue the hard work of the security agencies that compile them. Nigerians await Senator Akpabio-led Senate’s answers to these bewildering non-confirmation of President Tinubu’s nominees.”
MEANWHILE, former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, has alleged that some persons who are being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over financial fraud are members of President Tinubu’s cabinet. The chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made the allegation in a statement he made available to journalists.
According to the statement, Osita also slammed the President for appointing a serving member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as his minister. There were reports that the Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, was still having her one-year compulsory service with NYSC when she was appointed.
According to the former Minister, the battle between Atiku and Tinubu over the president’s academic records “is a national disgrace. That all the aforementioned institutions allowed a man to be sworn in without definitive statements about his qualifications is a national tragedy. For 23 years, the issue of President Tinubu has been a recurring decimal in our national equation.
“Under his reign, a current youth corps member is serving as Minister, and people under investigation by EFCC and made public are sitting in the Federal Executive Council. And they all passed through security screening.”
THEGUARDIAN
