Drama As Ambassadorial Nominees Couldn't Recite National Anthem

                                                          

The Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and observers were shocked to the marrows yesterday when one ambassadorial nominee did not know the capital of Lagos State while two others could not correctly recite the National Anthem and National Pledge respectively.


The mild drama took place at the commencement of the screening of 47 ambassadorial nominees by the committee in the National Assembly in Abuja.

Upon the take-off of the screening exercise, the nominee from Anambra State, Mrs. Vivian Okeke, who was the first to face the Senate screening committee, was asked to recite the National Anthem but she became nervous and although she started the recitation, she could not carry through the test.

Hence, a member of the committee, Senator James Manager, compassionately came to her rescue by helping her to recite it to the end.

In the same vein, another nominee, Ibrahim Isah, from Niger State, was asked by the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Monsurat Summonu, to recite the National Pledge. Like Okeke, Isah failed the simple screening test as he could not correctly recite it.

During the recitation, Isah had said “…to defend her unity and integrity, so help me God,” instead of “to defend her unity, and uphold her honour and glory, so help me God.”
Besides, another nominee from Benue State, Mrs. Ada Ndem, was asked to mention 12 states in Nigeria and their capitals but when she got to Lagos, she said the capital of Lagos is Lagos.
Failing these simple tests worried some watchers as they wondered how the nation’s ambassadors could be unable to recite the anthem or pledge of the country they are going to represent just as it was viewed to be shocking that an educated Nigerian who rose to a laudable height in civil service did not know the capital of Lagos, the most popular state in the country.
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