President Bola Tinubu has withdrawn the ministerial nomination of Maryam Shetty and replaced her with Festus Keyamo, his former presidential campaign spokesman, and Mariya Mahmud.

The decision was communicated to the Senate on Friday, shortly before the screening of the president’s 19 new nominees.

Although the reason for Shetty’s removal was not communicated by the presidency, some Nigerians have begun to speculate that her social media activities might have contributed to the decision.

Shetty operates an active Tiktok account, and some Nigerians have referred to her as a Tiktok influencer unfit to be a minister, but FIJ has not independently verified if the social media branding played a role in her removal.

READ MORE: Data: With Ministerial Nomination, Tinubu Reneges on Promise to Women

FIJ earlier reported how Tinubu’s former 47-man list had only nine women, a statistic that meant only 19.1 percent of nominees were women.

Thursday’s decision takes the ministerial nominees to 48, nine women and 39 men. This figure means for every one female nominee, there are at least four male counterparts. While his earlier total meant women got 19.1 percent, the new total drops that number to 18.75.

Despite several calls for cuts to cost of governance and women inclusion in running the country’s affairs, Tinubu has nominated the most number of ministers in Nigeria’s history, outdoing Olusegun Obasanjo’s 47 in 1999. Tinubu has also nominated the third least percentage of women for any president’s first term.

Tinubu’s female ministerial percentage is only better than Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 outing, and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s 2007 stint. Buhari nominated 36 ministers in 2015, out of which only six were women.

Goodluck Jonathan is the only Nigerian president with more than 20 percent female ministerial nominees. In 2011, he submitted 41 names to the Senate, 13 of which were women.