The weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting will not hold on Wednesday, Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said.
Mohammed attributed the cancellation to the lack of adequate time for ministers to prepare documents for the meeting.
He said this is as a result of the Eid-el-Kabir holiday.
President Muhammadu Buhari has only presided over one FEC meeting since August 19 when he returned to the country after a 104-day medical vacation in the UK.
On August 23, he had, in place of the meeting, received the reports on the probe of the director-general of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), both of whom are on suspension.
Femi Adesina, Nigeria’s presidential spokesman, had defended his principal’s decision to cancel the meeting, saying no law states the meeting must hold weekly.
“There is no law that says the federal executive council meeting should hold every week. There is no law that says it must be weekly. Under a past administration, it used to hold once every two weeks,” he had said.
“So, there is no law that says it should hold every Wednesday. It depends on what you have on the agenda to discuss. The president is the chairman of that meeting. So, he has the discretion to hold or not to hold (the meeting).”
Before travelling to London for a second time on May 7 to receive further medical attention, President Buhari had missed the FEC meeting for weeks.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was the Acting President while Buhari was away, had presided over the weekly meeting in his absence.
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