•Presidency ignored red flags, senate handicapped, says senator
Emameh Gabriel in Abuja
The Senator representing Edo South Senatorial District, Neda Imasuen of theLabour Party, has said one of the reasons a former governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, was not confirmed as a minister was his poor efforts at ending killings in Southern Kaduna and some of his recent unpatriotic utterances.
He, however, faulted the presidency’s handling of background checks of ministerial nominees before they were sent to the Senate for confirmation.
Neda, who stated this yesterday at an interactive session with the Association of Edo State Journalists in his office at the National Assembly complex, Abuja, said if the presidency had done a diligent work before hand, the embarrassment witnessed during the ministerial confirmation would not have surfaced.
The Senate, on Monday, withheld the confirmation of Malam Nasir El-Rufai, Stella Okotete, and Senator Abubakar Danladi over security screening. But confirmed the appointment of 45 other nominees sent to it by President Bola Tinubu for screening.
El-Rufai is the immediate past governor of Kaduna State; Okotete, from Delta State, is Executive Director, Business Development, Nigerian Export-Import Bank; while Danladi was deputy governor and later governor of Taraba State.
Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, said the three nominees, who were not confirmed, had to undergo security screening from relevant security agencies before their appointments would be confirmed.
But the Senator explained that all the drama would not have arisen because, “there are steps towards the final announcement of who becomes a minister.”
He said: “The first step starts with the president, who has the prerogative to nominate a candidate. So, the first step of screening starts from that very level. And the president has all he needs to screen any candidate. The EFCC is under him, the Police is under him, all the necessary tools he needs to screen them are under him. We don’t have that at the National Assembly.
“So at the point the president looks at an individual and nominates that individual, the screening process start at that level. He should go through these agencies first of all, who should go back to him and said this is what is it and for this reason, we cannot recommend this person for appointment. They missed it at that point.”
Neda explained that the Senate was handicapped and had no knowledge of the allegations leveled against some of the nominees apart from El-Rufai, who was known to have performed credibly well as a minister of the FCT, but at the same time has questions to answer about his efforts to end the killings in Southern Kaduna and some unpatriotic utterances he allegedly used in some viral videos published online.
According to him, all they had in their possession was the CVs of the nominees. He said there was no way the Senate could have known all about the nominees neither did the Senate have his WAEC before it to clear allegations against persons with questionable credentials.
“That ought to have been done at different levels before it came to us. I think we should take that again and say that before the president nominates, perhaps, it should come with the necessary clearances for us to also review, because if we had those clearances there, we are in the better position to say yes, this person has been cleared.
“One of the nominees, who was allegedly barred for ten years said he has gone to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has cleared him. That is what he said. But we don’t have the Supreme Court in front of us. We don’t even know all that facts until people started asking those questions,” he explained.
He said if those had come earlier, the senate would have been in a better position to decide whether they would be cleared or not.
“The president would have been advised on what occurs in the Senate. And it’s left to him to say based on some of the questions and some the answers that were given, I will still put you forward or I will withdraw your nomination, because he has the prerogative to nominate.
