The All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT under the auspices of the APC Progressive Vanguard have demanded the reappointment of Muhammad Bello as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA by President Muhamadu Buhari.
This demand followed the successful screening and confirmation of Bello who is the immediate past Minister of the FCTA by the Senate as Minister designate on Tuesday.
Suleiman Saidu, FCT Chapter Coordinator of the Vanguard in accompany of Idris Umar -Farouq, North-Central Zonal Coordinator of the group while addressing journalists in Abuja stated that the former Minister had recorded significant milestones in the territory and should be brought back for continuity.
“It is our prayer that the President should consider Muhammad Musa Bello to continue as Minister of FCT because of the good working relationship we had with him and because when he came on board there were abandoned projects by the past administration which he keep on doing and that is exactly what we want. Government is a continuous process and we admired him and we are seeking the attention of the President to reappoint him to be FCT Minister.
“The President lives in the FCT and sees most of the programmes that this man has done so far in the FCT. For us, in the aspect of security, we will want to give it to Bello. In infrastructure, he has tried, even when we were in recession, he was able to put one or two infrastructure. So for these reasons, even if the President is not having it in mind, we are speaking today to the world to reconsider and still bring him back to us”, Saidu stated.
While commending Buhari for nominating Bello again as Minister, the group said, “we want to give thanks to almighty God and to equally thank Mr. President for the reappointment of Muhammad Bello as Minister. We are happy for his reappointment and to equally promised him that, the youths of APC are ever ready to stand by him.
“Before the reappointment, there were some groups that were like protesting for his reappointment and that is the reason why with the support of the Chairman, Abdulmalik Usman we sit down and organise a round table to tell the world that we in APC in FCT we are ready to support the Minister and we will not allow anybody to jeopardize his efforts in bringing infrastructure to the FCT”.
Assuring the Minister nominee of the support of the party and youths in FCT, Saidu noted that, “in the first tenure of the Minister, the youths of FCT were far away from the Minister, we did not come close to the Minister but this time around we want to come close to the Minister because we have so many things to do in terms of empowering our youths and women.
“This time we want to identify with the Minister by coming close so that we should know some of his programmes and to see how far we can go in assisting him in helping some of our youths and women, in terms of job creation and empowerment and that is some of the agenda that we want to put in place”.
On the non-inclusion of an FCT indigene among the Ministerial nominees, he maintained that, “with regard to the issue of FCT was left out of this Ministerial appointment, we are worried over it and we are going to use this medium, it is not by fight, it is by dialogue to seek the audience of our leaders, the Senator representing FCT, the House of Representatives Members representing AMAAC/ Buwari and the one representing Abuja South and other stakeholders in the party for us to a least come together and see how we can forge ahead and tackle this issue of not giving FCT Minister because we already know that in the constitution, the FCT should be treated as a State.
“In FCT we have limited positions and that is why we find it difficult empowering our youths. We have only one Senator and two House of Representatives when other States are having 12 Reps and three Senators. Even though the names of the Ministers have been sent and the screening done, we want the President to at least assist us by giving more positions so that our people will be carried along”.
