When, in November 2019, an over-excited Ahmed Lawan, Nigeria’s senate president, said the Senate will do whatever President Buhari wants and requests of it, he was laying down a marker as to the type of legislature the 9th National Assembly would be. He even requested the president to re-forward to the Senate the name of Ibrahim Magu for confirmation as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – the same person the 8th Senate twice refused to confirm on the strength of security reports submitted by the Department of State Security (DSS). Fortuitously, the 8th Senate was vindicated when the government set up a panel to investigate allegations of corruption and abuse of office against Magu and eventually sacked him.
There are very good reasons the constitution delegates the duty of screening and confirming most presidential appointees to the Senate in a presidential democracy. It is so that the president, invested with so much power already, will not be the sole authority in choosing ministers and heads of government agencies. The second reason is so that the senate acts as gatekeepers to ensure only worthy or credible people are appointed into positions of authority. So, overtime, before an appointment is made, the intended nominee will pass through security checks/clearance before being sent to the Senate, who also do their own thorough checks and screenings. And in practice, both in the United States where the practice was copied from and in Nigeria, whereas the majority of appointees are confirmed, there have also been some high profile rejections and refusal to confirm. One recent example is the derailment of Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden. Her nomination was opposed even by moderate Democrats over her past tweets attacking some congressmen and women on both side of the aisle. Many potential nominations are dropped just because of the baggage they carry and the knowledge that they cannot escape Senate scrutiny and rejection. This thoroughness by the Senate invariably improves the quality of appointees as presidents do a thorough job of vetting potential appointees.
In Nigeria, despite the abuse of the process by Senators who only seek to extort nominees or even turning the process into a caricature by demanding nominees take a ‘bow and go,’ there have been at least some pretensions to seriousness. The 8th Senate under Bukola Saraki twice refused to confirm the appointment of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC chairman based on a security by the DSS. Their decision turned out to be the right one.
How does one then explain the confirmation of a known religious extremist, terrorist sympathiser and hate preacher as minister in Nigeria? I fully expect the president, Muhammadu Buhari, to appoint such characters into positions of authority. He is a provincial man with a nativist worldview.
How can the Senate – made up of 109 supposedly eminent people from all the states of Nigeria – justify such confirmation? Did they do any background checks on him? Did they request a security report about him from the Department of State Security? What was contained in the security report if any was submitted to the Senate? Did any of the Senators’ do any research on the person of Pantami? Do Senators even have research staff in their oversized offices who devote time to scrutinising nominees? When such reports or research are done, do Senators even have the time to go through them or are they singularly devoted to carrying out oversight duties of government agencies – another name for shakedown and extortion?
This is as much a failure of the legislative process as it is an abuse of executive authority. We all know Muhammadu Buhari – and he cannot change now. He is a lost cause. But how can the Senate representing all the states of the federation fail so spectacularly in its gatekeeper role of federal appointments. How could they stand by and watch a known extremist and open terrorist sympathiser be in charge of the database of Nigerians?
But it appears the 9th Senate is a lost cause too. The same Senate that was ignored by the former service chiefs, and which passed several motions in 2020 calling on the president to fire them, and when he refused, calling on the service chiefs to resign. This followed their absolute failure in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency and the banditry and insecurity in the country, yet, the same Senate almost unanimously confirmed the same service chiefs as ambassadors shortly after their reluctant retirement even despite the protests of Nigerians, the many petitions against the retired service chiefs and the several allegations of crimes against humanity hanging on their necks.
If, as the Senate confirmed, the retired service chiefs failed woefully in their assigned professional duties, how could they be expected to perform credible ambassadorial duties in which they aren’t professionals? Isn’t the Senate rewarding failure and sweeping serious allegations of crimes against humanity under the carpet? Nothing of this mattered to the Senators. With the exception of the Senate minority leader, Eyinnaya Abaribe, who kicked against the confirmation, there was almost unanimous approval of the retired service chiefs.
Truth is, most Nigerian presidents do not care what about the backgrounds of those they nominate for appointments because they know the Senate is not capable of performing its screening and confirmatory functions effectively. It is either the Senators are busy extorting the nominees or positioning themselves to curry favours from the ministers after they assume office or, as the 9th National Assembly has become, a worthless, rubber-stamp legislature, concerned only about its allocations and emoluments and the shakedown of government agencies. With such a National Assembly, we should expect more of the kinds of Pantami and the retired service chiefs.
