President-elect Buhari appeared to have dashed the
hopes of the governors elected on the platform of the
APC when he rejected their plans to submit a
ministerial list to him.
The APC governors, led by Governor Rochas Okorocha
of Imo State, had, last Tuesday, visited Buhari in Abuja
to pledge loyalty and make some demands.
At the
meeting, some requests were placed on the table
openly, while the request to drop the list of possible
ministers came up for discussion behind the closed
door.
Sources close to the meeting between the governors and
General Buhari indicated that the state chief executives came
out of the visit with heavy minds.
Planning to maintain the tradition already instituted by the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where the state governors as
party leaders in the states are requested to submit list of
possible ministers and Ambassadorial appointees to the
president, the governors threw the request at Buhari.
But it was learnt that the General rejected the proposal and
declared that the Constitution does not mandate him to take
a list of ministerial nominees from them.
The president-elect was also said to have rejected the call for
a bailout for the states that have been unable to pay salaries,
with a source informing Sunday Tribune that the General flatly
rejected the proposal, saying the he was aware the Federal
Government was not owing the states their allocations.
A source close to the discussion told the Sunday Tribune that
General Buhari told the governors that those of them in their
second terms could not complain about the state of
government finances, as they have all been collecting
allocations from the Federal Government all along.
The source quoted Buhari as saying that “I do not think we
can discuss that issue of Ministerial list. The Constitution
clearly does not mandate me to take a list from the
governors. To me, the governors should concentrate on getting
good hands to help them in discharging their duties in the
states.”