El-Rufai, Wike, other nominees face Senate screening Monday

The Senate will, on Monday, commence the screening of the ministerial nominees submitted to it by President Bola Tinubu on Thursday.

This is just as indications emerged that the President will create new ministries and form his full cabinet in two weeks.

Speaking shortly after the names of 28 nominees sent to the federal lawmakers were read on the floor by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, the Senate spokesperson, Yemi Adaramodu (Ekiti South), said the Upper Chamber had suspended all its activities to commence the screening immediately.

Adaramodu said, screening will commence on Monday. We have suspended all the rules to accommodate the screening of the nominees.

We were supposed to proceed on our vacation today (Thursday) but it has been suspended for this screening. We are starting the screening on Monday. We are not going to allocate time to nominees to talk.

We will start by 11am on Monday and other days at 10am. We are ready to sit all day to screen them, with no limitation of hours. We won’t even time them. We would listen to them reel out their blueprint to us. The screening would be done in the presence of Nigerians.

Although the constitution prescribes that the President shall appoint at least a minister from each of the 36 states of the federation, the list sent by the Tinubu contained names of nominees from 25 states, leaving out 11 states.

The states not yet covered are Lagos, Kano, Adamawa, Bayelsa, Gombe, Kebbi, Kogi, Osun, Plateau, Yobe and Zamfara.

Meanwhile, Bauchi, Cross River and Katsina states got two slots each.

Meanwhile, Gbajabiamila said Nigerians should expect the naming of new ministries as President unveils another list of 13 ministerial nominees in the coming days.

Mr President intends to separate portfolios or restructure the ministries in such a way that you might be hearing of new ministries that were not standalone ministries before, the Chief of Staff to the President said this hours after he submitted the ministerial list to the Senate.

Explaining how the names on the list emerged, Gbajabiamila said, Mr President took his time to sift through those names. He dissected those names with a fine-tooth comb.

That’s what you have seen. Everyone, I believe, of the persons on that list is worth being on that list.

He explained that the names were sent to the Senate without specific portfolios attached to give the President enough flexibility to decide who handles what portfolio.

Gbajabiamila explained that President Tinubu is sure that all the nominees can fit in anywhere except for specialised offices such as the Attorney-General.

He revealed that the cabinet should be fully formed and functioning within the next two weeks.