Acting President. Ocheni was deployed as Minister of State for Labour and Employment while Hassan got the portfolio of Minister of State for Power, Works and Housing.
New Telegraph gathered that the decision by the Acting President to assign the ministers with portfolios was an interim measure to avoid the mounting pressure on him that he could not assert himself. Governor of Imo State and chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governors’ Forum, Rochas Okorocha, who was among those that received the President at the airport on Saturday, told reporters that Buhari will have to do some rejigging.
“The impact of the President’s return is that it will rejuvenate the economy and the polity. He will do a lot of restructuring and rejigging because Nigerians are expecting a lot from him,” Okorocha said. Another source confirmed to our correspondent that when Buhari met with the acting President on Saturday shortly after his return, both leaders also looked at the pending issue of posting of Ambassador designates and some board appointments that were yet to be made by the administration.
Aside the posting of Ambassadors who are permanent representatives to international agencies including the European Union (EU), African Union (AU) and the UN, majority of the diplomats are still awaiting deployment to countries of service. He said that the President will also put a final seal to the disagreement between the Executive and the Legislature over the delay in the confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as substantive chairman of EFCC. Magu was appointed as acting Chairman of the EFCC by President Buhari in November 2015, but has been rejected twice by the Senate on account of security report submitted by the Department of State Services (DSS) which indicted him.
“The President will, this time, bring to rest this controversy and also add vigour to the anti-corruption war,” the source noted. A member of the APC National Working Committee (NWC) told New Telegraph that party leaders are expecting Buhari to fill vacancies in the boards of federal agencies.
“APC members are waiting on the president to make board appointments and fill other vacancies. Some of the party members are expecting the president to make some appointments,” the APC leader said.
New Telegraph learnt that the national leadership of APC had submitted a list of about 2,000 party members to the Presidential Committee on the Reconstitution of Federal Government Boards of Parastatals, Agencies and Commissions, chaired by the suspended SGF, Lawal. There are hundreds of federal agencies, parastatals and commissions. Usually, board appointments are reward for party leaders and chieftains.
This has been the practice since 1999. In the last administration, senior party officials and leaders were made chairmen of boards of federal agencies, parastatals and commissions. The APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, had requested the 36 states chapters of the party and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to submit a list of 50 members each for consideration and screening for appointments into the boards of federal parastatals and agencies. The Federal Government had, on October 26, 2015 inaugurated an eightman committee headed by the suspended SGF for the reconstitution of the boards of federal agencies, parastatals and commissions.
