Encomium
Former chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, on Thursday, 21, 2016 called for the resignation of the principal officers of the House ofRepresentatives from the Speaker- Yakubu Dogara to Deputy Speaker Hon. Yusuf Sulaimon Lasun, the Chief Whip Hon. Ado Garba Alhassan and the Minority Leader Hon. Ogor Leonard Okuweh for Budget padding. He said the officers have been trying to “nail” him after he “faithfully and dedicatedly” executed his job as Committee chairman, hence his decision to open up on the corrupt practices of the officers.
Abdulmumin Jibrin who is a member of the APC, representing Bebeji/Kiru constituency, Kano made the allegations barely 24 hours after Yakubu Dogara announced the decision to replace him with Mustapha Dawaki, who is representing Kudu/Warawa Federal Constituency of Kano State. Jubrin claimed he was not sacked, rather he decided to step down.
He said his decision to open up was due to Speaker Dogara’s statement while announcing his decision to step down. He described Dogara’s statement as a “complete misrepresentation of the facts, false, mischievous, unfair and a calculated attempt to bring his name to disrepute, blackmail and silence”. He said he was portrayed as a scape goat.
He continued : “Lately I openly disagreed with some principal officers on the issue of immunity for Lawmakers and budget issues. I still maintained I will never support immunity.”
He accused the four officers of attempting to allocate to themselves N40billion.
“I strongly believe with every conviction that in cleaning up the budgeting system and considering what transpired during 2016 budget which I have all the facts documented, Speaker Dogara, Deputy Speaker Lasun, Whip Doguwa and minority Leader Leo Ogor should resign. These members of the body of principal officers were not comfortable with my independent disposition and my refusal to cover up their unilateral decision to allocate to themselves 40billion naira out of the 100billion allocated to the entire National Assembly.
“The four of them met and took that decision. In addition to billions of wasteful projects running over 20 billion they allocated to their constituencies. They must come out clean. My inability to admit into the budget almost 30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the 3 other principal officers also became an issue…
Seeing that the Speaker claimed that they have taken the decision or were going to take decision to replace me, he now has a responsibility to tell the world why they took or were going to take such decision. I challenge them to tell the world why?
“I will be releasing a more detailed statement in due course” he promised.
He also expressed his readiness to go all the way in bringing the officers to justice.
“I intend to explore all internal avenues of the House to brief my colleagues in detail and testify against Speaker Dogara, Deputy Lasun, Whip Doguwa and Minority leader Leo Ogor on why they should resign. If I am not allowed to exercise my privilege, I shall consider legal options.”
On his part the Hon. Dogara denied the accusations. Speaking through the spokesperson for the house, Abdulrazak Namdas, he asked? “If he had all these ‘facts’ before, why didn’t he make them public? Why is he doing that now?”
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