Emmanuel Aziken
30 June 2007
Lagos — After the flare-ups and flamboyance of the eight years of his predecessor, the cool and patient virtues of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua are confounding Nigerians.
No issue has as yet confounded politically imaginative Nigerians as the seeming delay in the naming of President Yar'Adua's cabinet more than thirty days after the administration came to power.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, hours after he was inaugurated on May 29, 1999 named senior positions into his cabinet and a week or so after, forwarded his ministerial list to the Senate for confirmation.
Yar'Adua on the other hand is holding on, leading to daily conspiracy theories on the elements in the now famous but veiled ministerial list.
Senator Florence Ita-Giwa who acted as Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters in the Obasanjo regime and who has been carrying out legislative liaisons for the new administration is the only one to so far give an official voice on the issue.
"We have today submitted the list of proposed ministerial nominees to both SSS and the Police after almost one week of thorough scrutiny of all necessary documents submitted by them," she said in a statement issued on the official letter headed paper of the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters last Wednesday.
Her statement had the effect of dousing the running riotous commentaries in the dailies on the fabled ministerial list that included.
As at Thursday evening the list of ministerial nominees was yet to be forwarded to the Senate from the Presidency and there were as yet no indications that the State Security Service (SSS) or the Police had finished with their own work on the list.
Beneath the impression created by Ita-Giwa's statement that the list was only sent on Wednesday, Saturday Vanguard sources disclosed that the list sent last Wednesday may not have been the first to have been sent from the Presidency to the security services.
A first list, consisting mostly of nominees forwarded by the state chapters of the PDP and other major interests was considered by the PDP top hierarchy at a meeting in the Presidential Villa on Thursday, June 21. The list that was approved by that meeting Saturday Vanguard gathered was despatched for security screening after the meeting. However, a significant proportion of the nominees, mostly politicians were found not to have scaled through the screening exercise. That may have been the first cause of the delay as the list of nominees was largely expected to have arrived the Senate at the beginning of this week.
However, there are indications that the failure of many of the nominees of the state chapters to scale through the security screening fell in with undisclosed plans of the President to curb the influence of professional politicians in his cabinet. Among the nominees believed to have failed the first security screening were some politicians with serious credibility badges that would have soiled the image of the administration.
A former Marxist, President Yar'Adua is said to be still determined to bring in only men with integrity into his cabinet and as such may have seized the opportunity of the failure of initial nominees to pass security test to bring in his own men. Saturday Vanguard sources disclosed that there have thus been various substitutions in the initial list that had been leaked to the media.
Besides, one major reason holding Yar'Adua from naming his cabinet is the ongoing negotiations with the opposition political parties that he has been desperately wooing.
While some of the opposition parties have easily given in, some others have remained trenchant. The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) last Wednesday forged an agreement with the Yar'Adua government and were supposedly offered positions in the federal cabinet.
The AC which on the other hand was as at weekend still confused over its own dialogue with the administration is now said to be split down its ranks on the offer of ministerial positions.
While former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and a group within the party are said to be opposed to participating in the Yar'Adua cabinet, some others within the party seem to be eager to embrace Yar'Adua.
Atiku at a reception for him on his return from abroad on June 14 had described offers of political appointment into the Yar'Adua government as haram (abomination).
A statement issued by the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation last Thursday disclosed the withdrawal of the AC from the negotiations with the Yar'Adua/PDP alliance. However, that statement was quickly denounced by a senior AC official based in Lagos who disclaimed it as not being an authoritative AC statement.
The official involved, Saturday Vanguard learnt has himself been pencilled down as a Minister of State and may have acted in order to protect his interest. The initial AC statement pulling out from negotiations with the PDP/Yar'Adua team had given credence to speculations that the negotiation was contributing to the delay in the formation of the Yar'Adua government.
"We are concerned about the well-being of Nigerians and not political appointments, but the PDP was predicating everything on appointments and on withdrawal of our petitions," the AC statement said last Thursday.
Besides the problems from the opposition parties, President Yar'Adua is also faced with the problem of contending with nominees supposedly presented by his predecessor, Chief Obasanjo.
Among the favourites of President Obasanjo are Chief Ojo Maduekwe from Abia State who is said to have lost out temporarily in his earlier bid for the PDP chairmanship and was supposedly being pushed by President Obasanjo into the Yar'Adua cabinet. However, that choice is said to have met with the stiff resistance of some major stakeholders who had earlier pencilled down Chief Emeka Wogu to represent the State.
Wogu a member of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) was chairman of the commission's sub-Committee that worked out the recent remuneration package for political office holders. Likewise some other choices of Yar'Adua such as Senator Sanusi Daggash who was nominated to represent Borno State and Maina Waziri, the former executive secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund who was nominated to represent Yobe State.
The nomination of Senator Akinlabi Olasunkanmi to represent Osun State is said to have split the party with some elements rising against his choice despite the alleged insistence of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinola. Olasunkanmi's card was his decision to heed the injunction of the Governor and other state elders not to withdraw his re-election bid in order to allow the emergence of the former state Governor, Isiaka Adeleke as the new Senator representing Osun West senatorial district.
Ambassador Bagudu Hirse and Damishi Sango were the two nominees on the list from Plateau State , but there were indications that the odds were shifting towards the former on account of the disinclination of Governor Jonah Jang against Sango. Sango is an ally of Senator Ibrahim Mantu, the former deputy president of the Senate who in the days ahead of the Plateau gubernatorial primaries openly sided against Jang who emerged the winner of the primaries. In payback time, Governor Jang is now said to be working against Mantu.
Interestingly, Mantu himself did not make the list not least because of the fact that he and Hirse come from Mangu.
There were as at weekend still confusion over the nominees from Kogi State, though Senator Tunde Ogbeha and Chief Bayo Ojo, the immediate past Attorney-General and Minister of Justice were said to have been favourites.
Bauchi State is also said to be tilting towards Ahmed Yayale, the outgoing Head of Service of the Federation and Senator Abubakar Maikafi. The earlier proposal to get the state's immediate past Governor, Alhaji Adamu Mu'azu to represent the state was said to have collapsed on account of the policy of dropping immediate past governors from the list.
The tension accompanying the revelation of the ministerial list nonetheless, there is the strong opinion that President Yar'Adua is determined to ensure that only credible persons find themselves into his cabinet and hence the heavy security scrutiny of the initial nominees.
As Ita-Giwa said in her statement last Wednesday, "Mr. President's directive that all necessary security requirements concerning the suggested names must be met before he makes a formal presentation to the Senate for final clearance."
"It is also in line with Mr. President's regard for due process, thoroughness and circumspection especially on a matter as serious as constituting a cabinet."
However, interestingly many of the nominees on the list are yet to be contacted by the security agencies involved in the screening.
The SSS, Saturday Vanguard gathered and as confirmed by Ita-Giwa is carrying out its screening stealthily.
A number of the nominees whose names were submitted by their state chapters had claimed that they were not contacted by the SSS or by other agents of the Presidency. But sources in the SSS, however, revealed that the agency has been doing a covert appraisal of all the nominees whose names were presented to the agency.
Files of the nominees where available were reportedly used and where not possible, agents were sent to comb their backgrounds.
Yar'Adua's seeming slow pace according to those who have worked near him is his own way of doing things.
"That was the way he carried out in Katsina. For one year, he took time studying the situation around him and once he took off, there was no stopping him," Mr. Leon Usigbe a journalist who covered him during his stint as Governor of Katsina State.
As Governor of Katsina State, he reportedly did not take long naming his cabinet as he was said to have known most of those who worked with him.
However, Katsina is a different ball game to ruling Nigeria and hence his even more studious devotion!
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