President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have tactically dissolved the special committee headed by the chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila designed to streamline the selection of persons to fill vacant positions in the federal boards and parastatals.
It was learnt that the seeming dissolution of the committee was to stave off friction between Gbajabiamila and the secretary to the government of the Federation, Senator George Akume over the leadership of the committee.
The dissolution of the special committee, it was learnt, was not made public by the Presidency as “such would have exposed more details about the intrigues in the Presidency”, a source confided in our correspondent.
This comes amid intrigues over who or which department in the Presidency will supervise the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
According to a presidency source, the president’s decision to dissolve the special committee, followed a simmering cold war and power tussle between Gbajabiamila and Akume.
Recall that Tinubu, in July, constituted the special committee to work on the fresh selection and nomination modalities for the replacement of appointees of dissolved federal government boards. The president equally appointed Gbajabiamila as the committee’s chairman.
Among others, Tinubu was said to have demanded thoroughness in understanding the agencies whose establishment Act mandates federal character representation or specified educational and technical expertise.
Other members of the committee were Sen. Akume, special adviser to the President on Political and Intergovernmental Affairs, Mallam Yau Darazo and some legal and private sector experts.
They were to study the law governing each affected Ministry, Department and Agency on the qualifications and requirements expected from persons to lead them.
However, shortly after the committee was constituted, pressure was reportedly mounted on President Tinubu from presidency bureaucrats over the inappropriateness of placing the SGF under the chief of staff in any committee as it was unknown to the governance culture at the federal level.
This, according to our source, further exacerbated the cold war between Akume and Gbajabiamila.
However, reports have emerged that an ad hoc committee to review the resumes of individuals who will fill board appointments was set up. The ad hoc committee is currently being co-chaired by a former governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, and a former governor of Jigawa State, Abubakar Badaru.
“If you observe, two committees have been appointed in the last two months on the issue of federal board appointments. Recall that when the first one was appointed with the chief of staff as chairman, everything about it was wrong because such was unknown to governance, especially at the federal level.
“So, it was a major issue that really created tension between the SGF and the chief of staff to the extent that persons close to the President had to intervene, but one of the two was trying to show his closeness to the President.
“But the truth is always the truth because you cannot hide for too long. The President was daily inundated with the same complaints to the level that the president had to enlist the services of the two former governors to intervene.
“Mr President therefore decided to allow things to go on smoothly by quietly disbanding the Gbaja committee and replacing it with another one. The only difference is that Gbaja is no longer there in the committee and that the two former governors are now co-chairmen with the SGF as the coordinator.
“The most intriguing thing is even the issue of who controls the NDDC now that the Niger Delta Ministry has been scrapped. Still, it is between the SGF and the chief of staff. It has never been supervised by the office of the chief of staff. Only the SGF office had supervised it before. But only God knows why someone is so much interested in putting the NDDC under supervision,” the source said.
