The Senator representing Ekiti Central, Opeyemi Bamidele, on Thursday explained the reason why some of the Minister-nominees being screened by the Senate are asked to ‘bow and go’.

According to him, the reason is that the Assembly already has knowledgeable information concerning the legislators.

He added that no Minster-nominee has been confirmed yet as proper scrutiny will still be done on the documents presented to the House.

“Mr Chairman, they need to know that former legislators who served in the National Assembly are subjected to the same level of screening.

“What we have done since yesterday was to screen, nobody has been confirmed. They will submit their credentials like every other person.

“After listening to them, the distinguished Senators also go back to study those credentials, the essence of this is just for us to establish the essence that they are who they claim to be in their documentation,” he said.

Senator Bamidele added that it is important to make this clarification so that members of the public will understand that, “the question we would have been asking them to clarify certain things are things that we already know.”

He added that the Nigerian Constitution is very clear concerning this tradition.

“The constitution of Nigeria is very clear as to qualification to appointment as a minister, you must be qualified to serve as a member of the House of Representatives and all of us are aware of the qualification.

“So, if people had been through this and has been able to serve in the National Assembly, it is taken for granted. However, that does not prevent the Senate from scrutinising the documents that they had submitted like the document submitted by every other nominee.”

The Senate President Lawan in response supported Senator Bamidele.

He said this remains the position of the Senate, to allow former legislators to take a bow and go because it is the tradition.

“We are not covering anyone by so doing. We are still going to scrutinise the submissions by those nominees. And if there is any submission that disqualifies a nominee, the fact that the nominee passed thru the national Assembly does not protect that nominee from being disqualified,” the Senate President said. (Channels TV)

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