Lawmakers reject six Sanwo-Olu’s cabinet nominees, demand identities

Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly have rejected the six cabinet nominees governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu sent to the lawmakers for confirmation, demanding their identities.

WesternPost reports that the House received a letter from the governor seeking the screening and confirmation of six new nominees for cabinet positions without revealing their names.

The Clerk of the House, Barr. Olalekan Onafeko, during plenary session on Tuesday, read the letter before the lawmakers quoting the governor as seeking the confirmation of a commissioner-nominee and five nominees in the position of special advisers.

However, the letter only named the commissioner-nominee as Mr. Abiodun Ogunleye, while the identities of the nominees for the position of special adviser were not mentioned making the House resolve to write back to the governor for the remaining identities.

The Speaker of the House, Rt (Hon) Mudashiru Obasa, while agreeing with the lawmakers that names should be attached to the letter, said that it was necessary for the House to know who would become part of the cabinet.

Reacting earlier, the Deputy Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Richard Kasunmu, observed that the letter did not follow the usual procedure of revealing the identities of the nominees.

“Thus, the process of not mentioning the names seems like coming through the backdoor,” he said.

He was supported by his colleagues, Hon. Ladi Ajomale and Hon. Owolabi Ajani, who noted that the previous lists from the governor had details of the nominees and that it made the screening by the ad-hoc committee easy.

“But in this case, it is only the commissioner-nominee that had a name attached to it and this is surprising. Maybe we should also pass information to the governor that the names should be specified,” Ajomale said.