The suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, is yet to formally hand over to the Permanent Secretary, as directed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Nigerian Tribune reliably gathered on Monday evening.
As encapsulated in the statement issued by the Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity), Chief Ajuri Ngelale, the suspended Minister was “directed to hand over to the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and she is further directed by the President to fully cooperate with the investigating authorities as they conduct their investigation.”
Barely 15 minutes after the announcement, our correspondent, who visited the ministry, learned that the minister left the office on receipt of the suspension letter, which was delivered by an official from the State House.
It was further gathered that all the security and protocol officers attached to the suspended minister have been recalled back to the official headquarters, in line with the modus operandi of their organisational services.
An official of the Ministry who is conversant with public service operations informed our correspondent that the Permanent Secretary cannot act on a mere report trending on social media but must receive an official memo on the suspension and subsequent directive.
When our correspondent visited the office of the Permanent Secretary barely 20 minutes after the announcement of the Minister’s suspension, one of the personnel attached to his office on the 5th floor of Phase 1 of the Federal Secretariat explained that the Permanent Secretary was busy and hence could not attend to newsmen.
When informed that there was a letter of suspension sent from the Presidency to the Minister, he said, “The Perm Sec has not seen the letter. He’s a man of due process.”
During the surveillance of the Ministry located on the 6th floor, our correspondent observed that the Minister’s office was locked and all the chairs being used by her advisers had been evacuated from the office corridor.
Some of the staff who were seen gathering in clusters were overheard discussing the development.
While none of the federal workers from other ministries located within the Federal Secretariat declined to grant interviews when approached, Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) FCT Council, Comrade Abe Fisayo Makanjuola, expressed excitement over Mr. President’s directive.
He said, “It’s the right development because the president is just coming into power; we have one year to assess him fully, and he has started on a very good note.
“The diversion of money is a very bad thing to do by the Minister who has just been appointed, and if eventually an investigation is concluded and we find out that it is true, the president has taken the right step in the right direction by suspending her while the investigation is still on.
“This is a very good thing to do, unlike what we had in the former regime, where, in a series of scandals, nobody was talking, nobody was suspending anybody.
Look at the former Minister of Aviation (Hadi Sirika); what of the investigation labelled against him has been done? Well, he’s not part of Tinubu’s government presently, but it’s still the APC government.
“We believe the Presidency can still extend that particular long arm of the law to that particular personality and other notable Nigerians who have been involved in the act for that very long time. We hope to see better things in the days ahead,” he noted.
On his part, a federal civil servant, Christopher Emmanuel, observed that the issue of the diversion of funds into private accounts is still an allegation.
He said, “It’s an allegation right now until the court says that the woman (the minister) is guilty. But the decision made by Mr President is a good one in the right direction because the Ministry of Humanitarian has messed up; they need sanity in that entire ministry.
“The Ministry is young, so as a result of that and for the record to be set straight, the suspension of Betta Edu is a good thing that could happen in Nigeria. Like before, they will tell the president that they should suspend some ministers who do not perform.
“They will not listen, but this president is a listening president, and this decision is okay with me as a person.”
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