Posted by By STEVE NWOSU on
President-elect, and Katsina State governor, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, appears to be receiving his baptism of fire already, as pressure is mounting on him concerning those who should be in his first cabinet.
President-elect, and Katsina State governor, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, appears to be receiving his baptism of fire already, as pressure is mounting on him concerning those who should be in his first cabinet.
Daily Sun gathered that the biggest pressure Yar'Adua is getting is coming from none other than his godfather, President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Despite widespread local and international condemnation of last week's flawed presidential election as well as the efforts by key Presidency functionaries to win some credibility for both the controversial poll and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) president-elect, it was gathered that serious tussle for federal appointments have already begun, with Obasanjo in the vanguard.
Information available to us indicates that President Obasanjo is currently helping to constitute the cabinet of the incoming government and has already nominated nine persons of his own for appointment as ministers by the Yar'Adua government.
Apart from the ministerial nominees, Obasanjo is said to have also taken up the responsibility of appointing a ‘suitable' Chief of Staff for the new president. He is said to have verbally shortlisted three candidates, among whom he intends to pick from. Top on the list is Governor Adamu Mu'azu, the outgoing governor of Bauchi State, who not only lost in his bid to install his Secretary to the State Government as his successor, but also failed to clinch a senatorial seat in last weekend's National Assembly elections.
The appointment would be seen as an apt compensation for Mu'azu, who is believed to have done well in Bauchi but was so busy campaigning and touring the country to deliver the Yar'Adua/Jonathan that he had no time to sit down and plant his own man at home in Bauchi.
Also in the race for the post of Chief of Staff are Governors Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna and Adamu Abdullahi of Nasarawa State. Both are believed to be die-hard Obasanjo loyalists who allegedly dropped their respective presidential ambition as soon as the president asked them to do so. In the build up to the failed bid to kick Vice President Atiku Abubakar out, both governors were reportedly promised the VP slot.
However, the president-elect is believed to have also put in a word for his own present chief of staff in Katsina State.
A highly reliable Presidency source however, told Daily Sun that whoever is appointed Yar'Adua's Chief of Staff may still have to work in the shadow of Gen. Abdullahi Mohammed, the current Chief of Staff to President Obasanjo. Obasanjo is said to have directed that Abdullahi works with the new president and his team for the next two years, to help groom the new chief of staff.
Asked to explain what this "grooming" entails or whether it has always been the practice in the Presidency, the source said he was "not aware if anybody groomed the current chief of staff" and had yet to hear of chief of staff being groomed by anybody. "But that is what Baba wants as another way of ensuring continuity," the source said.
He denied that it was any attempt on the part of Obasanjo to perpetuate himself and his influence in Aso Rock.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo is also said to have impressed it on Yar'Adua to do everything possible to ensure that his daughter, Iyabo, emerges as the next Senate President. However, the president-elect is said to have told him that whoever would emerge to lead the Senate would have to be decided in the Senate by the senators themselves.
Meanwhile, as Obasanjo busies himself with the self-imposed task of constituting a cabinet for Yar'Adua, his government continues to battle with the issue of credibility raised by the widely acclaimed monumental fraud that characterized both the April 14 and April 21 elections, even as several opposition figures head for the courts and tribunals to seek to void the results of the polls that produced Yar'Adua, among others.