The Chief of Staff to the President, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila has lauded the president for meeting the deadline as stipulated by the constitution in the submission of ministerial nominees list.
Speaking to State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he said the president took his time to thoroughly go through the list to ensure that the names of the nominees are a good mix of people with political acumen and technocrats.
“Well, first of all, I mean, I’m sure you all know that the government is not fully formed until a cabinet is in place, and that process started a while ago, culminating in the delivery of ministerial nominees today.
“The president took his time. He spent a lot of time going through, did a lot of due diligence, and went through the nominees one by one. As you know, he had 60 days from the time of his inauguration, as stipulated in the Constitution. He has fulfilled that requirement of the Constitution by submitting 28 names today.
“As his letter stated, and was read on the floor of the Senate, the remainder of the names, not sure how many, probably about 12, or 13 will be forwarded to the Senate in the coming days.
“As far as the nominees themselves are concerned, and like I said, Mr. President took his time to sift through those names.
“He dissected those names with a fine tooth comb. And that’s what you’ve seen, each and every one, I believe, of the persons on that list are worth being on that list. But I really hope that we haven’t missed anything that would have necessitated any name not being on that list. But we wait and see.”
Asked why portfolios were not attached to the names sent to the senate, he said fixing portfolios to the names will cause problems if the President changes his mind after they have been screened.
“Yes, I mean for me that would have been one way to go about it. It would have been a welcome development. As good as that sounds it straight-jacket the President to pigeonhole one person in an office or the other.
What happens then if you change your mind? Do you then bring the person back for screening again, because the President is at liberty to change your mind?
“For instance, if I decide I want somebody as Minister of Labour, and then after setting the name, later on, I decide that, you know what, I didn’t know this about this person, this person would actually be better with another portfolio.
“And meanwhile, the senate has screened that person for that particular initial portfolio, what happens then? Do you now rescreen the person?
“But for now, it’s been thought wise that we stick to the tradition of sending the names and then whilst the screening processes going on allowing the Mr. President and his team to to look at the portfolios and the characters and see how they fit.
“The first step that he has done is that these are people that can work wherever you put them, except these specialized fields like attorney general and what have you.
“But in the main in most of the portfolios, he believes most of them can fit in anywhere. And what’s important is also that the Mr. President intends to separate portfolios or restructure the ministries in such a way you might be hearing of new ministries that were not standalone ministries before. So the process continues.”
