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 integrity.”
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.
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Politics