The chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Transition Committee, Ahmed Joda, has submitted an 800 paged report to President Muhammadu Buhari at the Defence House in Abuja on Friday, June 12, 2015 and absolved himself of the rumours that he is to blame for the President’s delay in making appointments in his administration.
After submitting the full report of the committee, he spoke to newsmen and according to him, political appointments, contrary to the rumours going around that the President had been waiting for his reports before making appointments, are solely the prerogative of the President.
Joda however, blamed the delay in the committees report to the fact that they had gotten 18,000 pages of handover notes, with barely a few days to the inauguration, on May 25, 2015 from former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
“One of the terms of references for our committee is to receive the handover note of President Jonathan and this we did not receive until about weeks after our inauguration. We received the handover note on the 25th of May and that report was about 18,000 pages and it took time to even sort them out and to make sense from them, read them, analyze them and come up with recommendations.
“Political appointments are entirely at the prerogative of the President. He will go through our report and understand our recommendation. I think he deserves a little bit more time.
“This is not an ordinary transfer of government from one President to the other, in this country we have never witnessed this kind of transition from one political party to another, the political party in opposition won the election.
“Previous transition from one president to the other did not require long process like this. I think this is part of the evolution of democracy. The country has to be a little bit more patient, it cannot be with immediate effect.
“For about five weeks, we went through memorandum, listening to presentations from all over this country. Today we submitted about 800 pages of the report to Mr President, it is now his property and I believe in due course he will begin to act on it,” Joda concluded.
