Tinubu hugs deadline, replaces 4 names on ministerial list

ABOUT four days to the expiration of the 60-day provision for the President to submit names of ministerial nominees to the Senate for screening and confirmation, President Bola Tinubu is yet to fulfil this constitutional provision.

Recall that President Tinubu took the oath of office on May 29, when former President Muhammadu Buhari handed over the mantle of leadership to him.

Multiple sources in the Senate told Vanguard weekend that the upper legislative chamber is yet to receive the final list of the ministerial nominees.

Sources at the presidency had last week hinted that the list was ready, but that a few adjustments were being made by the President.

One of the sources disclosed that four names initially penciled down by the President in four states, have been withdrawn and replaced with new names.

Another source also disclosed that the final list was supposed to be submitted to the Senate last week but for the opposition against the immediate past governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, who is said to be the President’s preferred candidate to replace Senator Abdullahi Adamu as national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Ganduje, it was gathered, was initially considered for a ministerial slot but for the resignation of Senator Adamu, which was said to have propelled the President to nominate him as possible replacement for the former chairman, being from the North-West where Adamu hails from.

This is said to be generating crisis as some stalwarts of the APC have argued that the former governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Tanko Al-Makura, who is from the North-Central as the former chairman, was more “cool-headed than Ganduje.”