The hope of a former Governor of Kano, Abdullahi Ganduje to be a minister has been sealed. The immediate past governor who is among All Progressives Congress, APC, bigwigs angling to be appointed as minister has been dropped from the list of ministerial nominees sent to the senate by the president.
The magazine reported that President Tinubu sent the list to Senate President, Godswill Akpabio on Tuesday following his return from Kenya.
The Senate president was planning to read the letter on the floor on Wednesday, but a change in plan in the activities of the upper legislative chamber stopped him.
“President Tinubu had recalled the letter sent to the senate for him to make some amendments, among which is the removal of Ganduje’s name from the list and his replacement with another nominee,” a source in the Senate said.
The former Kano helmsman has now been tipped to become the next National Chairman of the ruling party, whose chairman, Abdullahi Adamu resigned from office on Monday.
Adamu, we recall was forced to resign from his top position by hawks in the party who convinced the president that he could not be trusted.
He has since been replaced by the APC Deputy Chairman South Senator Abubakar Kyari, in an acting capacity.
Indications that Ganduje has been tipped as the next chairman emerged on Wednesday after President Tinubu met with both Ganduje and Governor Hope Uzodinma, Chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum, PGF, in Aso Villa, Abuja.
Even though the duo has remained mum after the meeting with the president, it was learned that the meeting ended with Ganduje agreeing to drop his ministerial ambition for the APC chairmanship.
Sources close to the Presidency informed the magazine that the decision to choose the former Kano governor is for two reasons mainly.
“The president is trying to pacify the Northwest after the region lost out to Godswill Akpabio from the south south in the senate president race. Secondly, the president has decided not to appoint Ganduje a minister to reduce tension in Kano state between Kwakwanso and Ganduje,” a source said on Thursday.
The reliable source stated that the resignation of Adamu on Monday created an opportunity for the president to “resolve the Gordian dot” created by the rivalry between the two former governors who are angling to become ministers in Tinubu’s cabinet.
The source, however, did not say whether the president will appoint Musa Kwakwanso minister in line with reports that the former governor has been promised by the president that he will get a ministerial slot.
Recall that President Tinubu met with Kwakwanso and Ganduje last month in his quest to intervene in the political crisis rocking the commercial city following the take over of power by the Kwankwanso-led New Nigerian Peoples’s Party, NNPP from the All Progressives Congress.
Ganduje had exited the Kano Government House failing to impose a successor. But as a major backer of Tinubu during the presidential election, the former governor had been tipped among those to be appointed as ministers.
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