Opalaba just called, ostensibly to see how I was doing. He is my good friend after all. But you do not have a tree in the backyard without knowing the type of fruit it bears. So after the exchange of pleasantries, Opalaba-way, I volunteered a thought.
“Finally, the list is in and the Senate is in session. Mr. President cannot wait to have his men and women of distinction to help with his change agenda. Thankfully, Senate is up to the task and the screening has been as thorough and as fair as it can be under the circumstance. We must all be proud of this new momentum. Perhaps now, we are just witnessing the new beginning that we welcomed on May 29.”
I did not hear a response from the other end and I thought that the Almighty Network had played a fast one on both of us. “Hello! Are you still there?” I enquired.
“Of course, I am here.”
“But why didn’t you respond to my observation? It is unusual for you to be out of words? Is everything alright?”
In truth, I could not pretend to be shocked. I know that my friend would not ordinarily call unless he had a bone to pick. And what else is current on the political horizon than the list of ministerial nominees and the Senate screening of same. That I volunteered a positive outlook was obviously too much for him. He had apparently called to complain!
“Oh! Seriously? What seems to be the issue? Were you expecting to be nominated?” I asked.
That only added fuel to the fire in my friend’s angry belly.
“Expecting to be nominated? Did you just ask that of me? And did you really think that I am so dumb and hopeless?”
I knew what he meant. The original Opalaba and his friend Arohanran had taught us the relationship between action and reaction; between doing and receiving; about how one good turn deserves another. Simply put, you should not expect to reap where you did not sow and you may expect to step on a wet ground only if you or someone had taken the initiative of throwing water ahead. Without having being involved in Mr. President’s or his party’s campaign, Opalaba’s point was that it can only be a dumb and hopeless person that would expect to be a ministerial nominee.
“Well, then, what is your problem? Is it with the list? Or is it with the screening? It better not be with the list because that is the President’s prerogative, and right from the moment he was announced as the winner, he did not hide his intention to choose his cabinet without any intervention.”
“Yes, I am aware of the President’s position”, Opalaba responded. And I cannot fault the wisdom of the choice that he made to be his own man who belongs to everyone and to no one. If I might add, he did a great job of assembling competent hands for the most part.”
“So what is your concern? I prodded my friend. In what sense did you accuse me of political naivety and ignorance?”
“Hmm!” Opalaba took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “A 20-year-old pounded yam can burn the fingers”, he responded. “When a hunter performs the traditionally prescribed thanksgiving ritual on account of the multiple games that come his way, the gesture is more for the purpose of claiming future blessings than it is for the present. And it is imprudent to burn your escape bridge after getting to the other side of the river.”
My friend was going to hang up on me after what appeared to me to be a new dimension of speaking in tongue. And to my question for a little more specificity, he only volunteered an additional balderdash: “I presume that you are an “Omoluabi” and as they say, you only need a half of a word.”
“Alright then, what about the screening exercise? I asked. “I thought that the Senate did a remarkable job and the leadership deserves a pat on the back.”
“Yeah, sure”, he responded. “They performed the job of an inquisitor on some and adorned others with colourful garland. They stuck to the local parliamentary tradition, which required them to respect former members of NASS and SASS. It does not matter whether those individuals have some ugly skeletons in their cupboards that need to be X-rayed for public examination.”
I agreed with my friend on this point. However, it also occurred to me that Senate was handicapped and could not do a thorough screening without knowing what portfolio a particular nominee was going to handle. The questions that were posed to the nominees were only based on educated guesses on the part of the senators. Thus, for instance, those nominees with legal backgrounds were asked questions relating to assignments in the Ministry of Justice, while those with finance background were asked questions relating to operations in the Ministry of Finance.
Even with such efforts on the part of the senators, they could not ask follow up questions when a nominee appeared to give an answer that demanded further clarification. For example, a nominee volunteered a thought on “change” which he asserted was “not a concept, but an ideology.” There are many senators in the chamber who could have asked for clarification of what the nominee meant. This is especially important since the whole agenda of the administration and the APC that controls the Senate centres around “change.” How might this distinction between concept and ideology influence or affect the job of a minister?
It was the same nominee who suggested that corruption can only be defined by the law and that we must avoid bringing morality into law. This is a positivistic outlook on the law and if such a nominee has the portfolio of justice, the question must be asked how he would handle the task, especially since we also know that morality is the foundation of the law.
Did the nominee mean that moral considerations have no role to play in the making of the law? That is certainly not true because they do. Or did he mean that once we have our legal framework in place, morality should have nothing to do with its interpretation and execution? There was a good opening for addressing such concerns by Senate. But under the circumstance in which the distinguished Senators operated in the 36 hours of screening, they could not do full justice to their sacred assignment.
The tradition in other places, including the constitution that we copied and modified, is that ministerial nominations come with assigned ministries or portfolios. The screening is done by committees with senators who have expertise in the tasks handled by the particular ministries. Thus the Senate Committee on Justice would handle the screening of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and the Committee on Health and Human Services would deal with the screening of the Minister of Health. After a thorough screening of the nominees, which includes public hearings, the committees make their recommendations to the Committee of the Whole, which takes the final decision by vote.
Hopefully, we would adopt this serious model of ministerial screening and thus improve the credibility of the system. As we saw in their performances, candidates for the exalted positions are all too willing to demonstrate their competence and integrity. Unfortunately, by the way that Senate handled their screening, one can only conclude that the nominees have not been accorded the seriousness and respect that they and their assignments deserve. They also deserve our best wishes and prayers for a successful tenure, and speaking for Opalaba, my good friend, all the President’s lieutenants can count on ours without reservation.
NATION
END
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