SGF defends Buhari's ambassadorial list, says Federal character not compulsory for ambassadorial appointments
During their plenary last Wednesday, most of the Senators argued that the list did not reflect Federal character as 4 states namely Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ondo and Plateau, did not get any nomination.
However in an interview with journalist
over the weekend, Babachir argued that the constitution stipulated that
Federal Character must be applied for Ministerial positions and not
ambassadorial positions. Lawal
said since the ambassadors are career diplomats, it is possible that
states without nominees did not have officers who met the criteria to be
nominated.
“Of
course we have read in the newspapers some of their concerns such as
federal character and so on. At the last count my recollection is that
out of the 47 diplomat nominees, out of 36 states and the Federal
Capital Territory, 32 states are represented. While the constitution
preaches federal character, it does not say that every state must be
represented in any appointment, except of course in the case of
ministers. Not in all other appointments, so the spirit of the
constitution has been fully satisfied by having 32 ambassadors out of 36
plus one. I believe that every objective analyst will agree with
this"he said
Asides
merit and qualifications which were used as criteria, Babachir said the
prospective year of retirement from civil service of the nominees was
also taken into consideration.
“So one of the criteria the person must have is that he must not be less than 30 months to retirement. If
you know the processes of nominating and deploying ambassadors you will
know that for example, it is highly unlikely that the Senate will be
done with it within the next two, three weeks. These ambassadors will
need to be presented to the countries where they are going to be posted
for checks and confirmation by those countries. We
cannot dictate the speed at which they will do it, so it could take in
all honesty probably six to seven months for an ambassador to fully be
cleared and assume his new post. It will take longer still for him to
acclimatise and settle down in his work. There have been a subsisting
policy not by this regime alone that it will be good for someone who has
30 months to retire not be be posted because then he will just be
settling down before retiring, it doesn’t make sense.” he said
He said that another criteria that was considered was the grade level of the nominees
“Due
to no fault of this government, not all states have people in the
ministry of foreign affairs, in the foreign service department that met
this criteria.”
Babachir said himself and the Minister of Foreign Affairs will honor the senates invitation next week.
“Certainly,
we will appear, we are law abiding, we respect the National Assembly
and we respect the laws of the land. One thing however is clear, the
constitution makes it clear that it is the prerogative of the president
to nominate Ambassadors and the criteria he will use to do so is also
the constitutional right of the President. Whatever criteria he chooses
to use is constitutional. We acknowledge also that it is also the
prerogative of the Senate to approve or not to approve that nomination. Be
that as it may, I must say that we are disappointed that the National
Assembly took the decision it did but again we believe that the Senate
is made up of very responsible and patriotic Nigerians and the Senate is
made up of great people including ex-governors who have governed and
known the constitution regarding separation of powers. We
believe that the Senate will not do anything that will bring the
country to disrepute because right now Nigeria enjoys tremendous
goodwill all over the globe. Countries now have high regard and respect
for our president, our ministers and all other representatives of
government are treated very well and with respect wherever they go. It
is important to have ambassadors to sustain this goodwill.”he said
