Solomon-Dalong

At the Senate screening session this afternoon, Solomon Dalung, one of the ministerial nominees, did not bite the bait thrown to him from a senator who asked him to choose the Ministry he would prefer to handle. His response was that since it was the President who considered him worthy enough to be nominated in the first place, the onus rests on the same source to assign him to an appropriate Ministry.

However, Dalung had ready answers concerning the issue of the congestion of prisons which has been attributed to the snail speed of trials. According to Dalung who boasts a Masters degree in law, about 80 per cent of the inmates in the various prisons across the country are awaiting trial, and the facilities are not even enough to accommodate the prisoners. “I will come out with a policy to ensure that there will be a synergy in the system to fast track trials so that persons who should not be remanded in custody in the first place will be out on bail to ease the congestion,” he said.

Dalung’s solution to the incessant eruption of crisis in Plateau and Nassarawa States is that the problem must be tackled by getting to its root through the proper knowledge of the history of the crisis.” We must address where it started. The fundamental and remote causes are unemployment and poverty,’’ he said.