The Senate at its sitting on Wednesday, 20th July 2016 considered the report of its Committee on Foreign Affairs on ‘‘the alleged irregularities and lopsidedness of the list of 47 career Ambassadorial Nominees’’. It would be recalled that the Senate had invited the Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama and the Secretary General of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir David Lawal in June, to appear before its Committee on Foreign Affairs and explain the processes it employed in coming up with the list of 47 ambassadorial nominees after lawmakers from Bayelsa, Benue, Kogi, Ondo, Osun, Plateau and Taraba had alleged irregularities in the omission of nominees from their States.
Presenting the Report at the Senate plenary, Sen. ShehuSani (APC:Kaduna), Deputy Chairman , Committee of Foreign Affairs stated that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation had submitted that the ambassadorial nominees were selected on the basis of federal character, seniority, gender consideration, specialist relevance, competence and a minimum of 30 months period of service before retirement.
The Committee Report also observed that:
- Officers from Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ondo, Plateau and other States not featured on the career ambassadorial list did not meet the criteria approved for selection.
- The Executive is working on the list of non-career Ambassadorial nominees and will make up for the States that are not represented in the current list.
- The career ambassadorial list contains 12 women, which constitute 25% of the nominees.
Following its observations the Committee recommended as follows:
- That the Senate should proceed with the screening and the confirmation hearing of the 47 Ambassadorial nominees;
- That the President should expedite action on the submission of the list of the non-career nominees to balance the perceived lopsidedness in the nomination of the Ambassadors;
- That the Executive should promptly commence the process of the selection of all nominees and other principal officers of Government for appointments;
- That the Government should sustain the commendable practice of compliance to gender representation and balance in the remaining nominations;
- That the Senate and the Executive Arms of government should respectively facilitate the screening and confirmation hearings of all the career nominees and non- career Ambassadorial Nominees as well as the process of posting to quickly fill the vacuum in all Nigerian Missions Abroad.
The Committee also concluded that the 47 nominees were meticulously selected in line with due diligence.
