Lawmakers bicker as Senate confirms three RECs, INEC commissioner

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed the nomination of three Resident Electoral Commissioners and a National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission.

The nominees are Festus Okoye (Federal Commissioner/South-East), Monday Udo Tom (REC/Akwa Ibom State), Attahiru Garba Madami (REC/Niger State) and Ahmed Bello Mahmud (REC/Zamfara State).

The appointments were confirmed based on the recommendation by the Senate Committee on INEC.

The Senate, however, overruled the committee’s recommendation not to confirm Mahmud for the third time.

The recommendation had sparked a war of words between Senator Kabiru Marafa ( Zamfara-Centra) and other members of the Senate.

The lawmakers had earlier unanimously approved the non-confirmation recommendation by the committee.

Marafa had however insisted that the committee was wrong to have asked Mahmud not to be confirmed based on a petition by Governor Abdulaziz Yari alleging that the nominee did not originate from Zamfara State.

He cited Order 157 which mandates a committee to act on a petition against a nominee only when the petition has the name of the sponsor, their signature, a verifiable address and an affidavit deposed to on the veracity of the petition’s content.

He said, “There was a petition by the state governor opposing the nomination of Mahmud. In that petition, the governor alluded to just one thing, that Mahmud was not from Zamfara State. According to him, Mahmud is from Sokoto State.”

While Marafa admitted that Zamfara is not Mahmud’s ancestral state, the nominee was born and had his elementary education in the state, and was later appointed into public offices in Zamfara by previous administrations.

“This is hypocritical. It is hypocrisy at its best,” he said, alleging that the current Head of Service, a former commissioner and Chief of Staff to the Governor in Zamfara does not hail from the state.

The lawmaker alleged that Chairman of the Committee on INEC, Senator Suleiman Nazif, had been compromised.

“This report, again, I want to say, is not a true testimony of what happened in the Committee on INEC. Senator Nazif is compromised. Yes, he is compromised and I have evidence,” he alleged.

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