Ministerial Screening: North Wants To Retain Strategic Ministries

PHOTO: L-R: FORMER MINISTERS; REMI BABALOLA (STATE, FINANCE); IDI HONG (STATE, HEALTH); RETURNING MINISTERS, ADETOKUNBO KAYODE (JUSTICE) AND ODEIN AJUMOGOBIA (STATE, PETROLEUM).

ABUJA March 28, (THEWILL) - Ahead of Monday’s screening of ministerial nominees sent to the Senate by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, there is strong agitation by northern elements seeking that portfolios held by ministers from the north in the dissolved cabinet be retained in the zone.

This is just as the nominees and their godfathers have laid siege on lawmakers at Apo legislative quarters in a final bid to ensure their clearance as ministers.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan who early this month dissolved the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had last week sent a list of 33 ministerial nominees to the Senate for screening and clearance.

State governors and federal lawmakers from the north have been meeting in Abuja to get an understanding with the Acting President to give certain sensitive portfolios to the north to ensure a balance of power in the federal executive following the absence of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Such ministries include the ministry of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Finance, Works and Housing, Petroleum Resources, Agriculture and Water Resources, Justice among others.

Already the lawmakers are tipping Senator Bala Mohammed (Bauchi) to replace Adamu Aliero (Kebbi) as FCT minister, a position which is seen as an exclusive reserve of the north.

They also want Murtala Yar'Adua, nephew of the ailing President to be given one of the sensitive ministries.

Meanwhile the intensified lobbying by most of the nominees is against the backdrop of deluge of petitions at the National Assembly against a good number of them.

Many of the nominees and their god-fathers have since their nomination by Jonathan become regular guests at Apo legislative quarters as they besiege the homes of some influential senators including principal officers to lobby for their support for clearance.

Some of them especially those who were in the dissolved cabinet of the ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua are no longer in the good books of certain influential lawmakers who are said to have been bearing pressure on Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to drop them.

This is especially those perceived by lawmakers as being disrespectful to the legislature when they were ministers. Certain form of appeasement may be necessary such nominees to sail through in the Senate.

To get the ears of the lawmakers, nominees are using the connections of some highly influential politicians and traditional rulers as well as through pecuniary options.

Sources close to the leadership of the Senate hinted that there are series of petitions against most of the nominees many of which came from very influential elements from their home states.

A handful of the affected nominees it was gathered are not being supported by their representatives in the National Assembly.

Lobbyists shifted from the governors to the lawmakers when it became clear that the state chief executives do no have the ears of the Acting President in the choice of who made the list as Jonathan is said to have thrown out candidates nominated by some of the governors.