Daily Independent (Lagos)
Rotimi Akinwumï
25 June 2011
Abuja — President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to forward names of his ministerial nominees to the Senate for screening and confirmation before the end of this week.
This follows the conclusion of the security screening of the nominees by the State Security Services (SSS) on Friday.
The last batch of the nominees were at the SSS headquarters on Friday for their screening, which, Sunday Independent gathered, was personally supervised by the director-general of the service, Ekpeyong Ita.
Sources told Sunday Independent that the exercise was concluded on Friday because of the haste to meet deadline set for the organisation by the president.
Mr. President had been under intense pressure from Nigerians who expected him to have made known his cabinet, having been sworn into office on May 29 – four weeks today.
Several names were mentioned in the media as prospective nominees sent for screening, but some were said to have been dropped because of extraneous factors.
According to sources, whoever is dropped from the list sent to the SSS by the president might have to look beyond the SSS screening for the source of his or her problem, as it was gathered that the service did not recommend that anyone should be dropped by the president as unsuitable to hold ministerial appointment.
The service, it was gathered, only put forward to the president the report of its findings on the nominees without attaching any recommendation on whether a nominee is qualified to hold the position of a minister or not.
In the course of the screening, biometrics of the nominees were allegedly taken by the SSS, and police where they were also required to get clearance on crime record.
However, there were rumours that some of the nominees where exploited by some unscrupulous policemen, who tactically collected money from them when they showed up for clearance.
Sunday Independent has it on good authority that some of the nominees were made to pay between N10,000 and N20,000 under various pretext by some police officers who were detailed to handle the biometric collection exercise on the side of the police.
AllAfrica – All the Time