THE Senate has kept its promise of making the screening exercise comfortable for ministerial nominees. Days before the exercise started, a senator had hinted that only enemies of the country would oppose the nominees. With such blatant blackmail, what is going on should not surprise anyone.

Not many will remember anything remarkable about the tenure of Mr. Mohammed Adoke as the Attorney General of the Federation. He hardly had any position on any issue and the allegations against his office were enough to throw him out of office in some places.

The commonest of the allegations was his penchant for withdrawing high profile cases. His defence was that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had insufficient evidence to prosecute the cases. If we assume for a moment that Adoke’s claims were right, would the option, for a government that was strident in its anti-corruption posture be to find the “substantial evidence” that would win the cases? Why would the government not allow the “insufficient evidence” to be tested in court?

During the Senate screening last week, he defended the cases he withdrew from court with this lame excuse. The Senate allowed it to pass. There was no indication that as the man returns as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation that he would act differently. The Senate missed a chance to state its position on the withdrawal of the cases, often without the knowledge of the EFCC.

Again, we would be assuming that the Senate thought anything was wrong with Adoke acting that way. All the cases he withdrew were controversial. We do not know whether EFCC was following his promptings by entering into plea bargains that set many suspects free with terms that could make less criminally minded people change their minds.

The sessions where the proposed Ministers have been screened were slight improvements from the notorious precedents of “take a bow.” the pretences at asking questions collapse if one observes the absence of follow up questions that could task the nominees. When  Minister of Petroleum Mrs. Deziani Allison-Madueke said, she had flooded the market with kerosene, apparently her way of saying that she had dealt with the problem, nobody asked her why the product was scarce and out of reach of users.

It was obvious that neither the senators, nor Mrs. Allison-Madueke thought there was more to the kerosene problem than flooding the market with kerosene. It is unlikely they were users, in which case their knowledge of the excruciating times Nigerians were going through and the devastation of the forests as firewood has gained ascendancy would have caused deeper probing of the issue.

Senators and the ministerial nominee understood that Nigerians were watching on live television. The pretence at asking her questions was part of the game. Both parties played it well and the kerosene situation had worsened, maybe awaiting her return as Minister.

If the Senate, with the enormous responsibilities the Constitution gives it acts this way in public, what does it do at those secret executive sessions? There is a lot to worry about in this Senate.