Akpabio shields El-Rufai despite ‘strong petition’ against him
President of Nigerian Senate, Godswill Akpabio, on Tuesday, sidestepped a petition written against ministerial nominee and former Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai.
TheCornet reports that the Senate is currently screening 28 ministerial nominees President Bola Tinubu had forwarded to it.
While El-Rufai appeared before the Senate, a senator, Sunday Karimi, raise his concern about a petition against the nominee. He had urged the senate to allow him read the petition bordering on El-Rufai’s several killings that took place on his watch as governor in the mainly Christian Southern Kaduna.
“If I am permitted, I will to read the petition,” Sen. Karimi said.
But, while El-Rufai was seemingly disposed to responding to the petition, the president of senate Akpabio instead shielded him. Akpabio’s excuse is that the senate is incapable of dealing with petitions that might require a probe from security agencies. He therefore urged El-Rufai to take ‘a bow and go’ – a preferential treatment, which has become a precedent in the senate, allowing government’s nominees who might have been either a former governor or senator.
Like El-Rufai, former governors the senate had screened are the former Rivers governor, Nyesom Wike, and Abubakar Badru, the immediate past governor of Jigawa state.
