The Senate deserves applause for the rejection of Ms Lauretta Onochie as the Independent National Electoral Commission’s National Commissioner.
For a Senate that has come under severe criticism from sundry groups and individuals since 2019 as “a mere rubber stamp”, to reject President Muhammadu Buhari’s nomination of his media aide, a staunch and highly committed member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, despite her denials, on objective and verifiable ground, means Nigeria might have begun to witness a new era in the affairs of the upper chamber.
Chairman of the Committee, Kabiru Gaya, APC, Kano South, had in his report last Tuesday said that Onochie did not satisfy the provisions of the Federal Character Principles. The Senate at the committee of the whole subsequently voted against her nomination. This, many have said, is the right thing to do and the Senate did it not to satisfy the yearnings of the opposition but to preserve the sanctity of the enabling instruments governing electoral conduct in Nigeria.
The uproar that trailed Onochie’s nomination, the controversial trajectory of her case all along, to the alleged lies she told the committee combined to make her issue a rather unsavoury one.
An individual aspiring to such an office should not be found wanting. It is the candid opinion of this newspaper that her resort to denying her membership of the APC in the face of glaring records to the contrary speaks directly to her inability to say it the way it is even when pressured.
“It is difficult to understand why the handlers of the President couldn’t read the mood of the nation correctly that this was one nomination destined for rejection”
It is difficult to understand why the handlers of the President couldn’t read the mood of the nation correctly that this was one nomination destined for rejection. When she was not screened for almost seven months, Buhari had again in June, represented Onochie as INEC commissioner a second time.
It is given that INEC officials are expected to be non-partisan and unaffiliated with political parties.
For the record, President Buhari first submitted Onochie’s name for confirmation in October 2020, alongside the names of Muhamad Sani, Kunle Cornelius Ajayi, and Seidu Ahmad.
The nomination was met with public outrage principally because of Onochie’s very visible membership of the APC. Aside from that, she had also worked as Buhari’s aide on social media since 2015, where she cut a very controversial figure with a well-documented history of attacking opposition politicians, deploying acerbic and petulant languages freely and without restraint.
What is difficult to understand really is the motive behind the President’s resubmission of Onochie’s name, alongside five others, to the Senate in a letter read by Senate Majority Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi, during plenary on Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, expressed confusion at her being nominated a second time. In response, Senate President Ahmad Lawan said the matter would be dealt with by the Senate Committee on INEC, which had two weeks to report back after screening the nominees.
Unhappy at the development, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, civil society groups and others then staged a protest at the National Assembly against the resubmission. However, the Committee on INEC defied the protest and went about the screening process alongside Professor Mohammed Sani, Professor Kunle Ajayi, Ekiti; Saidu Ahmad, Jigawa; Professor Muhammad Kallah, Katsina; Dr Baba Bila, North-East, and Professor Sani Adam, North-Central.
Curiously, Onochie, during the screening, denied her membership of the APC three times, saying “I’m not a member of APC”.
A coalition of civil society organisations even headed to the Federal High Court in Abuja, urging it to set aside Buhari’s nomination of Onochie as INEC National Commissioner.
The plaintiffs, in their suit, filed on July 6, 2021, challenged Senate’s “referral, consideration, screening and possible confirmation” of Onochie for the position on the grounds that she is “a well-known card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and currently serving as the Personal Assistant on Social Media to President Buhari.”
The nine plaintiffs, in the suit marked, “FHC/ABJ/CS/604″, had asked the court to declare Onochie’s nomination as “wrongful, illegal, null and void”, and “same should be set aside”.
The PDP described the rejection “as the triumph of the Nigerian people over the barefaced attempt by the Buhari-led APC administration to corrupt and hijack the commission ahead of the 2023 elections”.
“The PDP asserts that the rejection of Lauretta Onochie by Nigerians has saved the nation from very serious crisis as well as salvaged INEC and the entire Nigerian electoral process from a ruinous pollution that would have led to the collapse of our democratic order.
“The party asserts that Onochie’s vexatious nomination, in total affront to paragraph 14 of the 3rd schedule of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), was a very dangerous machination by the Buhari-led APC Presidency against our electoral process, in the attempt to subvert the will of the people in the 2023 elections.
“Our party, therefore, commends Nigerians, including civil society organisations, the media as well as other political parties, for joining forces with the PDP in fighting for the sanctity of our electoral process by resisting Onochie’s nomination,” the party said.
But the applause and backslapping should go to the Senate for standing up for the truth and doing what the opposition and all well meaning Nigerians demanded. Kudos, Nigerian Senate.
