Senate receives petition against nominee, Aisha Abubakar

A petition calling for the disqualification of Mrs Aisha Abubakar as a ministerial nominee was on Thursday submitted at the Senate.

The petition by some stakeholders from Sokoto state, where the nominee is representing, said that she should be dropped from the list and be replaced with a "more competent person’’ from the state.

The petition was presented to the Senate’s plenary by Sen. Ibrahim Gobir (APC-Sokoto).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Abubakar is one of the six female nominees among 36 sent to the senate by President Muhammadu Buhari for screening and confirmation for appointment as ministers.

The senate screened and confirmed the nomination of three of the female nominees, Mrs Amina Mohammed (Gombe), Sen. Aisha Alhassan (Taraba) and Kemi Adeosun (Ogun) on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, contrary to public’s expectation that screening of remaining 18 ministerial nominees would continue on Thursday, the upper chamber resumed plenary without a word on the exercise which began on Tuesday.

NAN reports that screening of the nominees was not contained in the Order Paper for the day.

The paper did not also contain the consideration of the report of the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions on the petition against the nomination of Mr Rotimi Amaechi, which was shifted from Wednesday to Thursday.

President of the Senate, BukolaSaraki, had directed the committee to submit the report on Thursday to enable them to list Amaechi for screening.

No reason was given for the postponement of the screening and non-inclusion of submission of report on petition against Amaechi’s nomination on the order paper for Thursday’s activities of the senate.