National Regulatory Regulation Commission (NERC) chairmanship nominee, Professor Akintunde Akinwande has turned down his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari to head the agency.
Penultimate week, Osita Izunazo rejected his appointment as board member of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
This week, Mrs. Pauline Tallen (Plateau) and Usman Bugaje (Katsina) also rejected their ambassadorial appointments.
The rejection of Akinwande will be third in this week.
Akinwade is a Nigerian American engineering Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It was gathered by our source that Akinwande rejected his appointment because he was not consulted before his name was nominated.
It was further discovered Akinwande had refused to appear at the Department of State Security [DSS] for security checks.
The source said: “We also learnt that enough consultation was not made before the man was nominated.
“We were therefore informed that the nominee may have turned down his nomination.”
Upon discovery that the chairman is not present for the screening, the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, postponed the screening till further notice.
Giving reason for the postponement of the screening, the chairman, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, said it was impossible to screen other nominees in the absence of the chairman-designate.
Abaribe also said the privatisation of electricity sector was meant to improve the power sector adding that the inauguration of NERC Board was key to solving the power sector problems.
“Regrettably, when members of the committee assembled to screen the nominees made by President Buhari, we were told that the chairman-designate was unavoidably absent.
The presidential liaison who brought the nominees informed us that the chairman was unavoidably absent,” Abaribe added.
Abaribe, however, assured that the committee was ready to screen the nominees but insisted that “we cannot screen them until we have a formal communication from the Presidency.”
Other nominees for the board are Sanusi Garuba (vice chairman), Nathan Shatti (commissioner), Dr. Moses Arigu (commissioner), Dafe Akpeneye (commissioner), Prof. Frank Okafor (commissioner) and Musiliu Oseni (commissioner).
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