Buhari appoints aide, Lauretta Onochie, as chairman of NDDC board

President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed his aide on new media, Lauretta Onochie, as the substantive chairman of the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

Onochie is President Buhari‘s Special Assistant for New Media.

The nomination letters that the president had sent to the Senate during the plenary on Wednesday were read by Senate President Ahmed Lawan.

This is the second time Buhari is forwarding a list of nominees for the NDDC board for confirmation.

He sent the first list of nominees for the board in 2021 and the Senate screened and confirmed the nominees.

However, Lawan stated that Buhari’s decision to send another list of nominees for confirmation was because there was a flaw in the previous compilation.

In 2020, Onochie was involved in a contentious appointment into the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC). She was chosen by President Buhari to represent Delta State as an INEC commissioner.

Read also:Why Buhari will never release ‘agent of death’ Nnamdi Kanu –Lauretta Onochie

Nigerians, civil society organizations, and opposition parties expressed outrage over the decision by circulating petitions, holding demonstrations, and urging the Senate to reject Ms. Onochie’s appointment.

Numerous people criticized the nomination as being unlawful, primarily due to the fact that she is partisan and has publicly supported the government’s All Progressives Congress (APC).

She was rejected by the Senate in July despite having falsely claimed to the Senate committee on INEC that she had left politics in 2019 and was no longer partisan.

But her partisanship was not the reason she was rejected. Her appointment was denied, according to the Senate, because “it violates the federal character principle.”

Senator Kabiru Gaya, the chairman of the screening panel, claimed that Onochie’s native Delta State already had a serving INEC commissioner, and that approving her appointment would be against the law.

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