President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has resumed work at State House, Abuja, after a two-week vacation in the United Kingdom.
Tinubu, who returned to the country on Saturday, spent his first day at work yesterday having meetings with some of his aides.
ThisDay reports that the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa, were among the early callers at the president’s office.
Another top official, who met with the president was his Special Adviser on Policy Coordination and Head of the Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Ms. Hadiza Bala-Usman.
Bala-Usman is the aide charged with evaluating the performances of all the president’s appointees, especially the ministers.
Others, who equally met with Tinubu, were Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake; Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji, who doubles as Special Adviser to the President on Revenue; and Minister of Works, Dave Umahi.
President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, were among those who stayed late in the office with Tinubu before he closed for the day and retired to his official residence, a stone throw from his office.
There were hints from reliable Villa sources that most of those the president met were either people who had roles to play in shoring up the economy or those with political and output evaluation tasks.
Tinubu had from the beginning of his administration hinted at a plan to drop appointees considered unproductive or evaluated to have fallen short of expected delivery.
The suspicion that the anticipated cabinet reshuffle might happen very soon, probably in a matter of days, was further strengthened when Bala-Usman was sighted at the president’s office.
Recall that Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, and Senior Special Assistant to the President on Digital and New Media, O’tega Ogra, had told newsmen at State House on September 25 that the president had plans to rejig his cabinet soon.