WHY LAGOS GOVT OPPOSED ROLI GEORGE'S APPOINTMENT INTO NPC - ACN
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has said the opposition to the nomination of Mrs. Roli George as the representative of Lagos State in the National Population Commission (NPC) was informed by the need to adhere strictly to the Constitutional stipulations on such nominations, rather than on the basis of ethnicity or party affiliation.
In a statement issued in Abuja yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the clarification became necessary in view of the distortion of facts and outright lies being peddled by ill-informed commentators who have chosen, rather sadly, to trivialize a serious issue.
It said the Constitution was clear that appointments to such commissions as the NPC, which were not for the Federal Government but for the federation, must first be tabled for discussion at the National Council of State, in case Governors from the states from which such appointments were being made might have any objection.
'When the President brought the issue of Mrs. George to the National Council of State, the Lagos State Governor, His Excellency Babatunde Fashola, indeed raised an objection, on the strength of the fact that he should be allowed to have an input into the nomination of his state's representative in such an important commission as the NPC. The Governor was right in exercising his Constitutional rights.
'The President asked the Governor to put his objection into writing, which he duly did and forwarded to Mr. President. Curiously, as we write, the President has yet to either acknowledge or respond to Gov. Fashola's objection.
'While the President can use his discretion to overrule such objection, the responsibility of the office he holds and the weight of the issue at stake do not give him the latitude to simply ignore the Governor's objection.
'In any case, the President is inconsistent. The same President who handled a State Governor's objection to the nomination of his state's representative in the NPC with levity, went ahead to say that he delayed the swearing in of the new Chairman of the ICPC because of the objections he has received on his nomination, in view of the importance of the commission!!!,' ACN said.
The party said if the views of Governors on nominations and other issues concerning their states would count for nothing, the National Council of State could well be scrapped instead of being turned into a mere rubber-stamp.
It also said the attacks on the personalities of the three Senators from Lagos State who opposed Mrs. George's nomination were mis-directed and poorly thought-out, since they did nothing wrong in opposing the nomination purely on Constitutional grounds, not because Mrs. George is not from Lagos.
The party wondered why no one accused the three Senators from Taraba State of playing an ethnic or whatever card when they rejected a ministerial nominee from their state. ACN said Lagos State has proven time and again that its strength was in its cosmopolitan nature, and would therefore not object to any appointment on the basis of ethnicity or any other extraneous consideration.