Ministerial Screening: Uproar As Barau shut out Opposition Senators From Grilling El-Rufai

Deputy Senate President, Jibrin Barau, who took over from President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, to preside over the screening of some ministerial nominees on Tuesday, shut out opposition lawmakers from grilling former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai when he appeared before the Senate for screening.

Akpabio had stepped down briefly for Barau, the Kano lawmaker, to preside over the screening exercise which entered day two on Tuesday.

No sooner had El-Rufai introduced himself then opposition lawmakers indicated interest by raising their hands to ask questions.

Barau ignored them and pointed at lawmakers from the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, who mostly argued that as a former governor and minister, he should “take a bow and go like others have done so far “

That led to uproar on the floor but Barau signalled that an APC lawmaker should ask his question and later pointed at two other lawmakers to ask their questions.

He evaded the opposition lawmakers who were seated to his left that kept raising their hands to ask questions.

The Deputy Senate President later announced that the “questions are enough. You can answer that and take a bow and go,” to which opposition lawmakers protested, leading to renewed uproar on the floor.

El-Rufai responded to the few observations raised by the lawmakers from the ruling party concerning the power sector.

When asked how he would address the poor power situation in the country, he said Nigeria has “13,000 installed capacity” of power but “We don’t do more than 4000/5000 megawatt.

“Many of the generation stations cannot produce because of poor supply of gas” with “80% generated from gas.”

He opined that, “We must make sure gas and power are together,” arguing that, “Even if we generate 13000 megawatts today, our transmission can only take 4000.”

He stressed that “We need to close the loophole in our transmission system to avoid system collapse as witnessed in 2020.

“We must focus on transmission infrastructure,” El-Rufai stated, assuring that the government of the day was committed to solving the power problems in the country.

He lamented that “only three of the 11 distribution companies were doing well when last we conducted the stress test.

“Amendment to the electricity 2023 may be needed to bring this system to alignment so that we can provide electricity to Nigeria,” he said.

Another drama began when Akpabio took over from Barau when El-Rufai attempted to respond to the question on “several petitions written against him.”

Akpabio explained that “We will not consider the petitions here. People have also written petitions against others, not only you,” to which other senators chorused “Yes.”

Akpabio continued, “When we conduct our investigation, and there’s any need, we would refer our findings to the president and security agencies.”

He directed El-Rufai who was beaming with a smile to take a bow and go.