Opeyemi Bamidele, Senate leader, says former lawmakers who are being screened for ministerial positions need not be grilled.
Bamidele said this on Friday at the beginning of the screening of ministerial nominees appointed by President Bola Tinubu.
DailyPost reports that he said members of the Senate already knew the antecedents and capacity of the nominees who are former parliamentarians, it would amount to a waste of time to subject them to thorough grilling.
“This practice of ‘bow and go’ privilege extended to legislators is a global practice, not limited to the Nigerian parliament,” Bamidele said.
The Senate leader said the explanation has become necessary so as to correct the public impression that the red chamber was not grilling the nominees as promised, but only allowing them to appear and leave the chamber after introducing themselves.
Recall, Yemi Adaramodu, spokesperson of the upper chamber, promised that the Senate would carry out thorough screening on all the nominees by abandoning the usual ‘bow and go’ tradition.
“The screening is going to be thorough. It is not going to be a situation where the screening will be anyhow. We are going to know the background of the nominees and we are not going to disappoint Nigerians.
“It is not going to be a shallow screening. You must have the character, you must have the face, you must have the behaviour to be among the cabin crew that is going to fly to Nigeria.
“This time around, Nigeria is going to be better. Whoever gets to the floor of the Senate will be screened. We will not manufacture any questions,” he told journalists during a press briefing.
“But many Nigerians, who didn’t know the workings of the parliament, wondered why the Red Chamber jettisoned its promise of thorough screening and sustained the ‘bow and go’ tradition”, Adaramodu had said.
