The Senate has rejected the nomination of two non-career ambassadorial nominees sent by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The rejected nominees are Justice Sylvanus Nsofor from Imo State and Mr Jacob Daodu from Ondo State.
The upper chamber however approved the nomination of 45 others.
Details later…
Two months after the screening of Career Ambassadorial nominees, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs is yet to table the report at plenary for confirmation of the nominees.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on June 9 forwarded the list of 47 career Ambassadorial nominees to the Senate for screening and confirmation.
The nominees, who are all career diplomats with not less than 30 years in service, have all been screened but yet to be confirmed.
They were screened in July by the Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired by Senator Monsurat Sunmonu.
Other members of the Committee include Shehu Sani (Vice Chairman), Enyinnaya Abaribe, Shaaba Lafiagi, Sonni Ogbuoji and James Manager.
Investigation by our correspondent revealed that unless members of the Committee have a rethink, the Ambassadorial nominees may not be confirmed this year.
A top official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that the confirmation is being delayed because the Ministry could not meet the demands of the Committee.
According to the source, some members of the Committee allegedly demanded for gratification to facilitate the confirmation, which the Ministry could not provide.
It was learnt that when the demand could not be met, members of the Committee allegedly also requested that the Ministry should sponsor them to attend the last United Nations General Assembly in New York, which the Ministry could not also do.
Our correspondent learnt that because the above demands could not be met, the Committee members are now saying that the Ambassadorial nominees would not be confirmed unless the President sends the list of non-career Ambassadors who, in most cases, would be politicians.
It was also gathered that the leadership of the Senate may be using the various pending confirmations as bait to get “some things: from the Executive.
A top official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told The Eagle Online: “It is sad that our Senators feel there is nothing wrong if we don’t have Ambassadors in our Foreign Missions.
“We have reports from the different Missions that our country is being excluded from most diplomatic functions because we don’t have Ambassadors.
“It is the prerogative of Mr. President to appoint non-career Ambassadors and he may decide not to do so because of the recession we are experiencing.
“You know the career diplomats are civil servants and they draw salaries from government while appointing non-career Ambassadors will be additional burden on government.
“At the level of the Ministry, I can tell you that we have tried our possible best to lobby and appeal to the committee members to table the report at plenary for approval but to no avail.”
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, could not be reached for comment on the delay in confirming the Ambassadorial nominees.
The Senate on Tuesday began the screening of the 47 ambassadorial nominees sent to it by President Muhammadu Buhari for legislative approval.
Buhari had on June 9 sent to the Senate 47 names of Nigerians to be screened and confirmed as career diplomats.
The President, in the letter personally signed by him and dated June 6, 2016, requested the Senate to approve the list at the shortest possible time.
There was, however, drama during the exercise as some of the nominees, who were drilled by members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired by Senator Monsurat Sunmonu, could not recite the national anthem and the national pledge smoothly.
The nominees were asked questions ranging from diplomatic issues to the names of the senators representing their states, their geopolitical zones and the states in them, how many local government areas in their states, how many lawmakers in the Senate, among others.
While some of them stuttered while reciting either the anthem or the pledge, others missed their lines in the process.
Vivia Okeke (Anambra State), who was asked to recite the anthem, murmured when she got to the second to the last line of the first stanza, “One nation bound in freedom.” The panelists however came to her rescue.
Ibrahim Isah from Niger State, who is currently serving in Turkey, was asked to recite the national pledge. When he reached the third to the last line, he said, “To defend her unity and integrity,” instead of “to defend her unity and uphold her honour and glory.”
Hakeem Balogun from Lagos State, who currently serves in the United States, recited the old national anthem to a point and was asked to start again and he got it right.
Jane Ndem from Benue State, who currently serves in Japan, got the number of lawmakers in the Senate (109); she also got the names of senators representing her state but when she was asked to name 12 states in Nigeria and their capital, she got 11 but named Lagos and Lagos as its capital instead of Ikeja.
Shakirat Ogundero from Oyo State was able to name two out of three presidential candidates in the 2015 election – Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari.
Baba Garba, while reciting the pledge, skipped the “to serve Nigeria with all my strength” line, he returned to it and skipped “to defend her unity” again.
Janet Bisong from Delta State, while apologising for not being able to state the number of local government areas in her state, was interrupted by one of the panelists, Senator James Manager, who is from Delta, saying, “You know it; it’s 25.”
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, who led the nominees before the panel, after the exercise was postponed to Wednesday, however, said the reports of nominees not been able to recite the anthem and the pledge, which were already trending online, were not true.
But a senator in the panel, in a chat with journalists after the session, said Enang lied on the performance of the nominees.
“That was a lie. Everybody saw what happened. We were there; journalists were there; the cameras and the tapes were there. How can diplomats not know the anthem and the pledge of their country? If it were lawmakers now, he (Enang) would come for us,” he said.
Credit: Punch
The Senate declared on Wednesday that it would proceed with the screening and confirmation of the 47 ambassadorial nominees referred to it by President Muhammadu Buhari last month.
The resolution to proceed with the screening of the ambassadorial nomination followed the adoption of the report of the foreign affairs committee which investigated the allegation of lopsidedness ?in the nominations.
The Senate had last month ?asked its Committee on Foreign Affairs to investigate allegations of irregularities and breach of the Federal character clause in the constitution by the President in making the nomination.? But the senate in adopting the report of the committee ?yesterday asked the President to hasten to submit to it the list of non-career ambassadors to balance the nomination
Other recommendations of the committee adopted are:?
?”that the President should be advised to expedite action on the submission of non-career nominees, which is expected to balance the perceived lopsidedness in the appointments. Moreso, in future nominations, the executive arm should be guided to see the logic of sustaining the previous practice of presenting to the Senate a combined list of both career and non-career nominees for confirmation;?
“that the Executive arm should be equally advised to promptly commence the process of the selection of all nominees and other principal officers of government for an appointment, ahead of confirmation by Senate to avoid delays in governmental operations.
“the government is advised to sustain the recommendable compliance to gender representation and balance in the remaining nomination and any other one in the future with a view to giving the female gender the desired sense of belonging.”?
Presenting the report before the Senate, Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Shehu Sani, informed the Senate that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to the committee that the President breached no rules in the nomination adding that nobody from the four states of Bayelsa, Ondo, Plateau and Ebonyi where petitions had come from met the criteria for selection.
?
“?The nominees were carefully selected on the basis of federal character, seniority, gender consideration, minimum of 30 months of service before retirement and competence”?
“The submission from the SGF admitted that officers of Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ondo and Plateau were not featured on the list because they did not meet the criteria for appointment.” The report declared.
Credit: Guardian
