The last-minute inclusion of former Information and Communications Minister, Professor Dora Akunyili, in the list of the first batch of ministerial nominees, whose screening by the Senate begins next Monday, has stemmed concerns in some circles as to what would become of her in the months ahead.

Akunyili had unsettled the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) when she submitted a memo in the heat of the impasse occasioned by the health condition of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, on the need for the Vice-President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, to assume the functions of the office of the president as acting president.

But there were feelers last week that some Northern senators who feel unhappy with the role she played as a member of Yar’Adua’s cabinet might work against her confirmation by the Upper House.
Akunyili and former Minister of National Planning, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, are two members of the dissolved cabinet who dramatically made the final list of the first batch of nominees that was read on the floor of the Senate yesterday by Senate President David Mark.

Only seven old cabinet members made the first list, which was submitted on Tuesday evening. But after the crucial meeting between Jonathan and Mark Tuesday night, Akunyili and Usman were included on the list.

Remarkably, while Mark was reading the names on the list, senators shouted their disapproval when former Minister of National Planning, Senator Sanusi Daggash, was mentioned while they hailed when serving Senator Bala Mohammed (ANPP, Bauchi South) was announced.

Daggash, a member of the fifth session of the Senate, was removed from Yar’Adua’s cabinet in what sources close to the Senate said was due to his alleged incitement of the Executive against the National Assembly over the consideration and passage of the 2008 budget.
President Yar’Adua was said to have raised a number of observations in a letter to the National Assembly on areas that the Federal Legislature tinkered with the budget.

Yar’Adua had agreed with the National Assembly to sign the budget with the understanding that an am Legislature to reflect the fiscal estimates that the Executive considered realistic and implementable.
More names of fresh nominees were included in the list to raise the number of nominees that would face Senate screening on Monday to 33.
At least two letters by the acting president, dated 23rd March, 2010 and entitled “Appointment of Ministers of Federal Government”, were in circulation yesterday in the Senate. While one contained 32 nominees, the other one that was read by Mark had 33 nominees.

The 33rd nominee, who was number 24 on the list read by Mark, is former Minister of State for Finance in the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, Senator Jubril Martins Kuye.
His name was not on the first list of 32 nominees, thus confirming that between Tuesday evening and yesterday morning no fewer than eight names were added to the list.
Nine more nominees are expected next week to take the total number to 42. The constitution prescribes a minister per state while by practice, an additional minister from each geo-political is appointed. Kwara, Adamawa, Cross River, Ebonyi, Benue and Oyo do not have representatives on the list yet.

Those who also dramatically made the first list are former Commissioner for Education in Jigawa State, Professor Ruqaiya Rufai; a Commissioner for Finance under Governor Ibrahim Shema’s administration in Katsina State, Alhaji Musa Sada; Captain Emmanuel Iheanacho from Imo State (who lost the state's slot to former Governor Achike Udenwa) under Yar’Adua and Professor Sheik Abddallah from Niger.
The letter by the acting president, addressed to the Senate president, read in part: “You would please recall that on Wednesday, 17th March, 2010, the Executive Council of the Federation was dissolved, with a promise that the Council would soon be reconstituted.

“Accordingly, in line with the provisions of Section 147 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I forward herewith, the names of the first batch of nominees for appointment as Ministers of the Government of the Federation for the consideration and confirmation of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
Vice-Chair of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, Senator Anthony Manzo, after consultations with the Senate president, confirmed to Senate correspondents yesterday that the screening would begin on Monday and not today as earlier expected.

The Upper House had already announced the postponement of its Easter recess by a week to enable it screen and approve the ministerial nominees. The Senate, as scheduled, should have proceeded on recess from today.
And as the Senate prepares to screen the 33 ministerial nominees, facts have emerged as to how the nine members of the dissolved EXCOF and the 24 new prospective ministers made the final list.

In putting together the ministerial list, the acting president, it was learnt, held consultations with political stakeholders such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Defence Minister and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council (PAC), General T.Y. Danjuma, National Security Adviser, General Aliyu Gusau and some governors said to be close to Jonathan among others.
But it was revealed that the list is dripping with Obasanjo’s heavy input. The former president has been linked with the candidature of at least six would-be ministers among them former Minister of National Planning, Senator Sanusi Daggash, former minister and ex-Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) under his regime, Alhaji Adamu Maina Waziri from Yobe State, and Minister of Youth Development in the dissolved cabinet, Senator Olasunkanmi Akinlabi from Osun State.

The two ministerial nominees who hail from Obasanjo’s Ogun home state, Senator Jubril Martins Kuye, who was Minister of State for Finance in Obasanjo’s first cabinet and Mr. Awodele Najeem Alao, representing the South-west, are also said to have found their way into the list through the former president.
The idea of bringing in Alhaji Murtala Yar’Adua, a Director of the defunct Habib Bank and son of late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, elder brother to President Yar’Adua, is said to have been mooted by Obasanjo and executed by Gusau who met the young Yar’Adua to persuade him to join the cabinet.

The elder Yar’Adua family, it emerged, has not enjoyed a favourable time since President Yar’Adua came to power in 2007 and the young Yar’Adua’s nomination may have afforded Jonathan an opportunity to bring them back into the mainstream.
The appointment is said to have emerged as a deft political move by Obasanjo as a soothing any perceived loss of influence by the Yar’Adua extended family as a result of the illness of President Yar’Adua, which has technically kept him out of power.
Sources also said the nomination of Martins Kuye, the leader of a PDP faction in Ogun State is a political strategy to whittle down Governor Gbenga Daniel’s influence in the state in the build-up to 2011 governorship election.

The return of former Minister of State, Petroleum Resources Odein Ajumogobia, former Information Minister Akunyili, former Minister of Solid Minerals Development Diezani Allison-Madueke and former Minister of State for Niger Delta, Godsday Orubebe, among others, are, however, directly linked with Jonathan himself.
Jonathan is also said to have personally rooted for the candidature of Navy Captain N.S. Olubolade (rtd), a former military administrator of his Bayelsa home state.

In the dissolved cabinet, only Orubebe and Allison-Maduekwe were said to be Jonathan’s nominees.
Orubebe is also said to be strongly favoured by Chief Edwin Clark, a respected South-South elder stateman and a strong backer of Jonathan's acting presidency.
Senator Bala Muhammed (Bauchi) is said to be one of the arrow heads of the pro-Jonathan Senators in the Senate during the height of Yar’Adua’s absence from the country for medical treatment.

Other nominees said to have been actively promoted by the acting president on the basis of their individual merit and professional competence are former Managing Director of NAPIMS, a division of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Chris Ogienwonyi, Mr. Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga from Lagos and Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho from Imo State.
While Ihenacho is a maritime expert, Aganga is an international accounting guru and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, one of United Kingdom’s leading accounting firms.

It was learnt that the nomination of Mrs. Chukwumeka Ngozi Nwogu from Abia State may have been pushed by former governor of the state, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu who is said to be very close to the Acting President.
A number of nominees from the North are said to have been backed by Danjuma, Gusau or former military President Ibrahim Babangida, such as Alhaji Umaru Aliyu from Taraba State and Alhaji Suleiman Bello from Zamfara whose nominations were pushed by Danjuma and Gusau respectively.

Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido is said to have promoted the candidature of Prof. Ruqiaya Rufai, his commissioner for education while Governor Muazu Babangida of Niger State sponsored Prof Sheik Abdallah’s nomination.
How Mrs. Josephine Tapgun, wife former military administrator of Plateau State, Fidelis Tapgun, got her nomination was not too clear last night but Tapgun was Director-General of the Obasanjo/Atiku presidential campaigns for re-election in 2003.
Some newspaper reports linked Mrs. Josephine Anenih’s candidature with her estranged husband and former Minister of Works, Chief Tony Anenih.

But sources have distanced Anenih from Josephine’s candidature, because, according to them, the two have long been separated.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Aganga, expected to man finance portfolio, is after all not a nominee of the jailed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain in Lagos State, Chief Olabode George.
Aganga, from Lagos State, has been confirmed not to be a relation of George, whose maternal cousins are said to be Oganga Williams.

The umbrella body of senior civil servants in Nigeria, Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), has assured workers in the public service that the announcement of the new wage for Nigerian workers would be made public on or before May 1, 2010.

ASCSN Secretary-General, Mr Solomon Onaghinon, the reporter on Wednesday, in Lagos, that the union would not relent in its efforts to ensure that the increase in wage was made to better the lives of Nigerian workers.
The minimum wage for public servants in the country is currently between N5, 500 and N7, 500.

According to the labour leader, “We are working towards an increase in wage for public service. The recent cabinet dissolution would not prevent it.”

Informing that a meeting between the Labour Minister and the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC) scheduled for March 19 was cancelled because of the cabinet dissolution , he, however, assured that as soon as a new Minister of Labour was announced, the person would continue from where the immediate past minister stopped.

“The cabinet dissolution will not stop the approval of the new salary. When a new minister is appointed, hopefully in two weeks time, the person will continue on the issue,” Onaghinon said.

The union scribe, who did not disclose how many per cent increment would be given to workers, said that it would be an improvement on what already existed.