Of ministerial screening and senate committees

The senate president has been unequivocal that the senate under him will not be irrationally confrontational or, deliberately embark on a collision course with the executive as some opinions have said of the 8th senate. However, the public will still expect to see a robust law-making body that goes about its primary, statutory oversight functions without coming across as an emasculated lap dog. The first serious interface between the red chamber and the executive, the screening of the ministerial nominees, was like a litmus test that Lawan’s senate abysmally failed to signal its independence.

The screening exercise was indeed a spectacle to behold. All the 43 nominees successfully and effortlessly went through the scrutiny of the red chambers. That gave the impression that all nominees were found to be spotless and competent. The exercise was also unique in terms of the record time it was carried out by the senators. Screening 43 nominees in five days, it was so much different from the preceding 8th Senate which screened 36 nominees in 30 days. Of course, 70% of the nominees were not asked any questions beyond being “bow and go”.

A number of the nominees were former governors with pending cases of corruption of monumental proportions under investigation or in the courts. In the valuation of discerning public, there were those of them whose poor low performance as former ministers ought not to have qualified them for reappointments. Also, the executive’s selection of the incoming ministers appeared to have been informed more by political factors such as, reward for contribution to the campaign, cronyism and satiation of powerful cabals and godfathers around the president. Although he is not going to stand for election, President Buhari appeared to have been swayed by certain forces to overlook the scale of capacity in favour of the exigencies of 2023. As it unfolded, the Lawan-Omo-Agege senate did not sieve but was merely a conduit pipe, something akin to a machine that churns out the garbage exactly as it was fed into it, warts and all.

Or, what rationale is to be found in the nominations from Sokoto, Kebbi through Kaduna to Katsina states? What sense can anyone make of those selected from Lagos, Bayelsa, Benue and Akwa Ibom states, among other bizarre examples? It makes pundits to wonder as to what’s meant by, “Next Level”? Nigerians had thought that the cliché was a vow to deliver more on the “dividends of democracy” more robustly and more tangibly than in the Buhari’s first tenure!

In its appointments of the leadership of critical committees, the senate, soon afterwards, demonstrated that it is on the same page with the executive in the choice of those to deliver its services to the people. We have seen in the senate list of committee leadership, square pegs in round holes; people whose experience, pedigree and antecedents are incongruous with the institutions and agencies over which they are expected to exercise oversight functions. Again, it was a situation of political expediency, cronyism and the powers of lobby superimposing competence and qualification.

Among other similar perplexing appointments of committee leaderships made by Lawan’s senate, one particular instance of Senator Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, senate committee chairman on defence and vice-chair on anti-corruption, suffices to buttress the point being made by a spectrum of observers on the subject. Pray, at a time when the nation is facing horrifying insecurity challenges, just what is the pedigree of the distinguished senator from Sokoto to qualify him to chair what is, unarguably, the most critical senate committee?

As an educationist, it was logical as it was appropriate that he was the senate committee chairman on basic education in the preceding 8th senate. By giving him the defence committee, is it that there are no senators with backgrounds in the military, the police or suchlike security and intelligence agencies? In the absence of such senators, wouldn’t one of them with background in the legal profession have been a more appropriate choice?

A flash back to a news report on the arrest of “dangerously armed criminals and political thugs” by security operatives in Sokoto in February this year, is, perhaps, a warning signal as to the danger inherent in the appointment of the senator from Sokoto to the defence committee.

According to the Army spokesman, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka, troops of 8 Division operating on Exercise Egwu Eke III on January 2, 2019, “arrested 16 persons believed to be political thugs armed with dangerous weapons along Illela –Danfulani –Gwadabawa road”.

General Kukasheka further said “while still conducting the search (on the arrested suspects), a prominent politician and a serving senator came to the scene and ordered his mobile police escorts to release them. In the process, an operative of the Department of State Services (DSS) was molested and his clothes torn”. How do we expect the said “serving senator” to conduct himself and his politics today?  It is frightful.

Further, how does Senate President Lawan explain his selection of a vice-chairman of the committee on anti-corruption when that very appointee is currently being investigated by the foremost anti-corruption agency, EFCC? In August 2, 2019, the Punch newspaper reported that Wamakko is being investigated by EFCC over N15bn allegedly missing from the Sokoto state treasury while he was the governor, 2007-2015. The argument here is on the strong issues of morality, public concerns, perceptions and propriety.

In the Nigerian ways of doing things, can the EFCC still go about investigating the weighty case of graft it has been handling against the man who is now the vice-chairman of a committee with powers to influence its flow of funds? Will not the anti-graft agency be intimidated or, on consideration of its own “best interest” decide to tread softly in its handling of issues pertaining to him or of his associates?

Is it possible for embattled Mr. Ibrahim Magu, in wanting or in desperation to be confirmed as substantive EFCC chairman, to still muster the courage and professional vigour in the investigation of Wamakko? As it is, all eyes will be on Magu and EFCC on this matter in the days ahead. Meanwhile, if the choice of the senate president in this regard was not one that was consciously made, then, it is very surprising and, sad that much introspection was not brought to bear.

Maikanti writes from Zone 6, Wuse, Abuja.

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