LP’s Senator Ireti Thanks Tinubu For Nominating First FCT Indigene As Minister

Senator Ireti Kingibe of the Labour Party (LP) has lauded President Bola Tinubu for nominating an indigene of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Zephaniah Jisalo as a minister. 

Jisalo is the first FCT indigene to be nominated as a minister since the present democratic dispensation in 1999, a feat Senator Kingibe, who is also from the area, is grateful for.

“I would like to, first of all, congratulate my nominee and all of the FCT for this nomination. We are all extremely happy and proud,” she said during the ministerial screening in Abuja on Friday.

“We would like to thank the president and the vice president for actually making this a reality; something that we have been wishing and hoping for a very long time.”

‘Highly Recommended’

While praising the nominee, Senator Kingibe described him as “highly recommended”.

“I have known him for so many years before he became local government chairman; he through two terms and after that two terms in the House of Representatives,” she noted. “So, he is well-known to me and definitely qualified to be a minister”.

She thereafter asked her colleagues to allow Jisalo, a former member of the House of Representatives, to take a bow.

“Therefore, I would urge all of you, according to the protocol that we have been following and as a member of the House – two terms – that he should also take a bow,” the lawmaker said.

“We [FCT people] are so happy [to the extent] that I am actually speechless of which you know that I am not.”

After her speech, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, therefore, asked the lawmakers if the nominee should take a bow. The senators unanimously agreed to that.

Jisalo, from Abuja Municipal/Bwari Constituency, once represented the area in the House of Representatives. Born on April 3, 1970, he was also the chairman of the Abuja Municipal Council Area (AMAC).