A former national director of publicity for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lanre Issa-Onilu has explained the reason behind the seeming delay in the inauguration and swearing-in of Ministers by President Bola Tinubu.
According to him, the President is carrying out some restructuring and working out details of job descriptions before inaugurating his Ministers, hence the delay is intentional.
OsunDailyNG recalls President Tinubu had sent a list of 48 ministerial nominees for screening and confirmation by the Senate but on August 7, the lawmakers confirmed 45 out of the nominees.
The three others – Nasir el-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna; Stella Okotete (Delta) and Danladi Abubakar (Taraba) were not confirmed due to pending security clearance.
The confirmed list has subsequently been transferred to the President by the Senate.
However, since then, the President is yet to inaugurate the cleared Ministers.
Speaking about the delay during an appearance on Channels TV Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday, Issa-Onilu said there is nothing to worry about as the delay is due to the restructuring going on and the need to lay a solid foundation.
He added that the nomenclature of some ministries would be changed and Nigerians would hear names they are not familiar with for such ministries.
In his words, “What we should ask is we need to ensure that we lay a solid foundation even for the cabinet to come in and take off.
“This is a new government and Asiwaju is a technocrat and if you bring someone to work with you, you must have a job description for the person.
“On Monday, they are going to be inaugurated. We have ministries, the president may have his ideas on how the ministries should work.
“He may want to tinker with the existing structure and he needs to prepare the bed before asking someone to come and lay on it.
“That is the only way to get things going.
“You don’t want to bring a minister in and say hold on you need to restructure the base. There is restructuring going on.
“You are going to hear ministries in terms of nomenclature you are not familiar with. And those are deliberate to ensure that you provide the necessary will to get things done fast enough.
“The bottom line is that there will be this exercise on Monday.”
