Amaechi for screening Today –Senate committee

In from Timothy Enietan-Matthews (Nation’s capital) . . .

Barring any last minute change, the Senate will Tuesday, screen former Governor Rotimi Amaechi as a ministerial nominee of President Muhammadu Buhari.

This was stated on Monday in Abuja by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, Senator Sam Anyanwu, while speaking with journalists at the end of the meeting of the committee.

Anyanwu promised that the committee will submit its report on the petition against the nomination of Amaechi at plenary on Tuesday.

Amaechi’s screening had been put on hold by the Senate because the committee failed to submit its report on two previous occasions it was billed to do so.

Aside report on the petition against Amaechi, Anyanwu also disclosed that the report on the petition against Aisha Abubakar, another ministerial nominee, would equally be submitted at plenary.

“We have heard Amaechi’s petition and all these reports will be ready tomorrow.

“Except there are further petitions, the reports on all the petitions so far received, will be submitted tomorrow.

“For now, what we have is that of Aisha Abubakar and that of Rotimi Amaechi, which will be submitted to the Senate tomorrow,” he said.

Meanwhile, Amaechi Media Office yesterday denied a report that the ministerial nominee stormed out of the residence of Senate President Bukola Saraki last Thursday.
The office made the clarification in a statement in Abuja against the backdrop of insinuations that Amaechi disrespected Saraki.

Read also: Rotimi Amaechi caught in the hunter’s trap
The statement said: “Our attention has been drawn to the lead report in a newspaper of today (Monday, October 19, 2015), where it was reported that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the immediate past Governor of Rivers State “was incensed over the deferment of his screening last week and stormed Saraki’s house to register his protest.
“The report which the respected newspaper got from ‘sources’, further claimed that during the visit of Thursday, last week, Amaechi “was said to have raised his voice to express his frustration before leaving the residence without seeing the Senate President…”
“The imagery created in the last four paragraphs of the lead report was an angry Amaechi who stormed the residence of Senate President Bukola Saraki, raised his voice as he made a scene or caused a “ruckus” to display his frustration over the deferment of his screening by the Senate, before “storming out in a huff”, without seeing the Senate President.
“This is absolutely not true. There is a deliberate and carefully calibrated attempt to characterise Amaechi with a very bad and demeaning mannerism.
“We must clarify that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi did not visit and was not at the residence of the Senate President on Thursday of last week”, the statement read.

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