Details have emerged revealing why the Lagos State House of Assembly rejected 17 of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s cabinet nominees.
Recall that the Lagos Assembly had disqualified seventeen out of the thirty-nine commissioner nominees sent to it by the Governor.
Recall that 22 of the Commissioner nominees were, however, confirmed by the lawmakers on Wednesday.
This follows the presentation before the House by Hon. Mojeed Fatai of the report of the 12-man ad hoc committee on the screening of the Governor’s commissioner nominees.
According to reports, the rejection of Sanwo-Olu’s 17 nominees was a confirmation of a rumoured cold war going on within the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Saturday Sun reports that stakeholders, politicians, and some government officials disclosed that the rejection resulted from a cold war among political gladiators, power brokers, and stakeholders in the state.
Multiple sources claim that the Mudashiru Obasa-led Lagos Assembly only acted on the scripts written by different aggrieved interest groups to pass a message to Governor Sanwo-Olu.
According to some of the sources, the rejection of the governor’s 17 nominees had never happened in the state’s history but happened due to an alleged ‘I don’t care attitude’ of the governor to some issues affecting party members and various interest groups.
A source said some of the rejected cabinet nominees were not going to be shocked over their rejection because of what had transpired during their screening
He said that most of them were not in the good books of their constituencies, and neither did they have any cordial relationship with the party or the representatives of their various local governments in the assembly.
The cabinet nominees’ rejection was also attributed to some actions and inactions of some of the former commissioners during the last general elections in the state.
But speaking on the issue, the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to Governor Sanwo-Olu, Gboyega Akosile, stated that his principal never abandoned the APC.
According to him, people on the list submitted by his principal to the State House of Assembly were from a pool of people nominated by party members across all the local government areas.
While describing Governor Sanwo-Olu as a good party man, Akosile noted that all the commissioner-nominees were selected based on merit, contribution to the party, and competence by the governor, his deputy, and party members.
“All the rumours being spread over the rejection of the commissioner-nominees by the State House of Assembly are mere imaginations of the peddlers of such rumours. There is no iota of truth in them,” he noted.