Ministerial list: Presidency mulls restructuring of MDAs

There are strong indications that the presidency might be mulling a restructuring of Ministries Department and Agencies of government, following the rollout of the first batch of ministerial list by President Bola Tinubu on Thursday.

The Chief of Staff to the President, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, gave this hint when he said Nigerians should expect to see some new ministries as the president intends to separate portfolios or restructure the ministries in such a way that some may come as stand alone ministries.

“Mr President intends to separate portfolios or restructure the ministries in such a way that you might be hearing new ministries that were not standalone ministries before.”

Speaking to State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on the list of ministerial nominees sent to the Senate, the Chief of Staff lauded the president for meeting the deadline as stipulated by the constitution.

He said that the president took his time to thoroughly go through the list to ensure that the names of the nominees are a good mix of people with political acumen and technocrats.

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“Well, first of all, I mean, I’m sure you all know that the government is not fully formed until a cabinet is in place, and that process started a while ago, culminating in the delivery of ministerial nominees today.

“The president took his time. He spent a lot of time going through, did a lot of due diligence, and went through the nominees one by one. As you know, he had 60 days from the time of his inauguration, as stipulated in the Constitution. He has fulfilled that requirement of the Constitution by submitting 28 names today.

“As his letter stated, and was read on the floor of the Senate, the remainder of the names, not sure how many, probably about 12, or 13 will be forwarded to the Senate in the coming days.

“As far as the nominees themselves are concerned, and like I said, Mr. President took his time to sift through those names.

“He dissected those names with a fine tooth comb. And that’s what you’ve seen, each and every one, I believe, of the persons on that list are worth being on that list. But I really hope that we haven’t missed anything that would have necessitated any name not being on that list. But we wait and see.”