President Goodluck Jonathan will take President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on a tour of the presidential villa on May 28, a day to the change of baton.
Briefing the media on Tuesday after the National Council of State meeting, Gabriel Suswam, governor of Benue state, said: “On the 28th, President Jonathan will conduct Gen. Buhari and the vice president-elect, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, round the villa.”
Babangida Aliyu, governor of Niger state, also clarified the confusion over “handover”, fixed for May 28, and “inauguration”, slated for the following day.
Aliyu said at the briefing: “It is only a technicality. One is inauguration, the formality of the new president taking over. Technically, the 29th is for the new man taking over.
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“For the hand-over of documents you don’t wait till that 29th because after the inauguration the transition committee may continue. If you recall, when President Jonathan came on board, he inaugurated the Gen. Danjuma committee to look at all the documents that were handed over to them and make recommendations. So it is a continuous thing.
“The handing over of document from the outgoing president to the incoming president will take place on the 28th and the inauguration on the 29th.
“So, 22nd is Jummat prayer, 24th will be Sunday service, 28th will be handing over as well as dinner and 29th inauguration, a launch on and a gala night.”
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It was also decided by the council that there has to be a template for civilian-to-civilian transition, Suswam said.
“The council decided that henceforth there has to be a template in which transition will follow. We have never had it. This is the first time one is going to be developed, so that there is no speculation as to what needs to be done, as everything will be in a template.
“If there is a transition whether it is from the same party to the same party or from one party to another, it is the same template. You will recall that we have never had a template in which to follow and how we go about our transition but what is going to happen this time around is going to be permanent,” Suswam disclosed.
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2 comments
Let Nigeria show maturity and lead the black race . Bickerings and unnecessary acquisition of wealth will not advance our course .Benchmarking our Due Process will be a gold-standard for other African nations .
We copied the presidential system from the USA, which has been handing over government from one party to the other for centuries, so all this talk about a template and making it look like something novel or some rocket science seems to me like creating an enabling environment to chop more money before exiting Aso Rock. A Level 10 civil servant in the Head of Service office or SGF office can prepare a template using the American model and it will reviewed within two days and adopted for use. This should have been done between March 28 and April 11.