The crossfire between a former chairman of House Committee on
Appropriation, Adbdulmumin Jibrin, and the Speaker of the House, Yakubu
Dogara, continued on Sunday, with Mr. Jibrin dropping yet another round
of allegations.
Mr. Jibrin was ousted from his position as the chairman of the
all-important committee on allegations of serial betrayal of trust.
Although Mr. Jibrin denied that he was removed from office or that he
betrayed lawmakers, he’d nonetheless continued to release details of
how the 2016 budget was to be padded by Mr. Dogara and other lawmakers.
Mr. Jibrin, a lawmaker from Kano State, said the speaker colluded
with his deputy, Yusuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Doguwa, and Minority
Whip Leo Ogor to earmark up to ₦40 billion to themselves in the National
Assembly budget. And that he was the one who thwarted their plot.
The lawmakers denied the allegations and said Mr. Jibrin was
expressing the scorn he felt after being sacked as chairman of Committee
on Appropriation.
Mr. Dogara has remained quiet, saying he would allow the House deal with the attacks from Mr. Jibrin “institutionally.”
In the latest revelations, which were contained in an email he
distributed Sunday evening, Mr. Jibrin said Mr. Dogara and principal
officers he named in his allegations should stop victimising him and
allow an atmosphere in which detailed investigation could be commenced
into the scandal as he was ready to come out with proofs to substantiate
his claims.
The allegations also included a step-by-step guide of how Mr. Dogara
allegedly hijacked the budget consideration process in other to
introduce frivolous line items as a way of forcing through his alleged
selfish interest.
Mr. Jibrin said he wrote the statement to clarify the fact that his
allegations were against Mr. Dogara and the others, but he ended up
giving new insights into what he said w here Mr. Dogara’s pervasive
corruption.
Some civil society groups have called for independent investigations of the various allegations by the anti-graft agencies.
Read the unedited full statement below:
MY ALLEGATIONS ARE AGAINST THE QUARTET OF SPEAKER YAKUBU
DOGARA, DEPUTY SPEAKER YUSUF LASUN, HOUSE WHIP ALHASSAN DOGUWA AND
MINORITY LEADER LEO OGOR NOT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AS AN
INSTITUTION AS MR SPEAKER DESPERATELY WANTS HONOURABLE MEMBERS AND THE
GENERAL PUBLIC TO BELIEVE.
I am compelled again for the purpose of emphasis to state
categorically clear that my allegations are against the quartet of
Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, House Whip Alhassan
Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor not the Honourable House as an
institution nor other members of the body of principal officers. The
other members of the body of principal officers were to the best of my
knowledge completely excluded from decisions on the 2016 budget and the
budget inputs inserted on their names were exclusively carried out by
these QUARTET.
I have to state this very clearly because these QUARTET have resorted
to desperate moves to drag the entire House of Representatives into the
case of gross abuse of office I have levelled against them as
individual Presiding and Principal officers of the House. This is
clearly a mischievous move to set me on collision with the entire house.
They have also recruited four from the VERY FEW members of their cabal
to use some elements of the Nigeria police to kidnap, harass, blackmail
and intimidate me into silence.
Until yesterday, the police were laying siege by my house blocking
the entrance and exit shouting that they want budget documents. They
embarrassed my entire family with a nursing mother and a seven-month old
baby that cried all night. The game plan was to arrest me and dump me
in police net while a heavy media propaganda will be carried out to
mislead the world that I have been sacked and police have picked me up
as a culprit in 2016 budget. Whenever I am released, an irreparable
damage would have been done to my person and that will stick for life.
As God Almighty will have it, I had travelled out of town before they
could execute their evil plan. God is always with the innocent. The
members in the thick of this plot are Hon Jagaba Adams, Hon Jika both
chairmen interior and police affairs respectively, Hon Muhammed Bago,
Hon Muhammed Zakari and the last one I need not to introduce him to
Nigerians, you know him better and know what he is best remembered for.
He is the one who threatened my life and the police are yet to take a
single action on him. He is now the Leader of the Dogara cabal. He calls
the shots in the House. He makes all the decisions of Mr Speaker. He
talks down on members and gets away with it. He has SUDDENLY began
living such an expensive life style. Lately, a former influential
principal officer of the House complained bitterly that it is only
Dogara that will hand such a committee to a person like Hon Herma Hembe
of this world, chairman FCT. They have been running from pillar to post
looking for evidence in their wild dream to nail me. I made a huge
sacrifice to leave, shouldn’t they just leave me alone?
I therefore urge my Hon. colleagues and the general public to call on
Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the 3 other principal officers to stop their
desperate attempt to drag the entire House of Representatives into this
matter. They should also stop using the House Spokesman Hon Namdas to
issue statements in respect to these allegations because it is a
deliberate attempt to mislead the public into believing that they have
the backing of the entire House on this matter. They should come out
and defend themselves and prepare for the investigation that will be
instituted by the House on this matter. At least the Minority Leader and
Whip have attempted some response which are at best lame! The House of
Representatives as an institution must live above board and will
continue to survive beyond people who abuse public trust like Mr.
Speaker and his 3 cohorts.
Let me make further revelations in addition to the ones I have already made which are in public glare.
ONE: During the budget period, when they discovered
that I was not the kind of a person they could use to perpetrate their
illegality, Mr. Speaker and the 3 other principal officers took away the
entire Appropriation Committee Secretariat to a secret location where
all sort of insertions were made into the budget. The blackmail has
always been – “Abdul people will laugh at you if anything goes wrong
between you and Dogara because of the lead role you played and the many
toes you stepped on to get him elected”. It’s been a painful experience.
Again the secretariat was taken away from me on Speaker Dogara’s
instruction for the second time to a location I don’t know and all sort
of insertions into the budgets were made and returned to me for
signature. I said over my dead body! It was a massive crisis behind the
scene until the early morning of the Friday that Mr President assented
the budget. It was Sen Danjuma Goje that brokered a compromise that
since the Deputy Speaker leads the harmonization committee, he should
also sign such that the harmonization committee will share
responsibility with us. Senator Goje pleaded with me so hard all night
and later shouted heavily on me reminding me that he is not talking to
me as a Senator but as a father. I cried heavily all night.
TWO: When the budget harmonization committee headed
by Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun gave out 80% concession across board to
the executive demands during the harmonization negotiation, it was
agreed that the remaining 20% should go to the entire NASS. The Deputy
Speaker excused himself that he wanted to go and consult with Mr
Speaker. He came back after few hours and in an unprecedented display of
greed presented to me a hand written note distributing the remaining
20% to only principal officers. 70% of the 20% was reserved for Mr
Speaker and himself while the remaining 30% of the 20% goes to other
principal officers. I am sure he will recognize the hand writing when he
sees it. My colleagues didn’t know all of these.
THREE: Mr. Speaker also directed me to create what I
advised him will be a controversial line item under service wide vote
to introduce about N20 billion project using the name of NASS. He
directed me to see a highly placed PDP politician which I did and
collected the documents. I advised him repeatedly against it but he kept
pressuring me until I bluntly told him I will not!
FOUR: When the Appropriation Committee received all
the budget reports from standing committees, an analysis was conducted.
We discovered that about 10 only out of the 96 Standing Committees of
the House introduced about 2,000 (two thousand) projects without the
knowledge of their committee members amounting to about N284, 000, 000,
000 (Two hundred and eighty-four billion naira). I was alarmed. But I
was cautious because at our pre-budget meeting with the committee
chairmen, I was clearly warned not to touch their budgets. I reported
the matter to the speaker. He did nothing about it obviously because he
was working behind the scene with the committee chairmen. That was the
beginning of the whole budget problem from the side of House and the
whole exercise had to go through several versions before it was passed.
So, is it Abdul that introduced 2000 projects into budget worth N284
billion? But I quietly bore the pain and abuses from all over the
country and continued to defend the committee inputs as a show of
loyalty to the institution I represent which I so much love and still
have many great minds in there. Apart from Chairman Agriculture Hon
Mongunu who owned up and explained his inputs at the only executive
session I was allowed to attend, the other few chairmen who loaded the
budget kept quiet and watched me bashed from every angle by angry
Nigerians.
People have asked why did I wait this long to open up, so much was
happening behind the scene. I fought the battle of my life to raise
these issues internally and get Mr. Speaker to address them to no avail.
I pushed so hard that I got frustrated and depressed. All my attempts
met brick walls. That was why some members were always raising their
voice against me because they do not have the facts. I later on realized
that the Speaker enjoyed that so much and colluded with his cabal to
dump everything on me. I am sure not too long some members that knew
what I went through will come out and testify. I also have evidence to
show my internal struggles.
In any case, under circumstances like this, and for young people like
us that are lucky to have accelerated career growth, the system scares
you from becoming a whistle blower. They will tell you that if you do
such, nobody will trust you or have confidence in you again. They will
scare you that it is not good for your image and it will affect your
career progression. Many young people in different sectors are faced
with such frustrating situation. Even at the moment, if I take the
advice of some people, I will get deeply scared and just keep quiet, so
that I can grow career wise? My usual response to them is that, isn’t
that selfish? Your only luck will be if a trigger occurs then you open
up. This is one such trigger! In any case, I would have opened up
anyway. I have written so much about these issues and more on NASS. I
posted over a month ago on my Facebook page that I will release the
piece as part of my 40th birthday in September. Well, I never knew it
will come much earlier.
Some people are also saying I kept quiet while it was good and now I
am talking because things have gone sour. Many members of the House and
Nigerians will be shocked to know that there has NEVER been good times
between myself and Speaker Dogara. It took few weeks after his election
as Speaker for me to realize I never really knew him well. I was hasty
to judge him by his innocent looking personality. We practically
disagree on everything. From when he started conducting himself like a
lord, wanting everybody around him to just say yes sir and go, shutting
and looking down at his colleagues, playing double game between the
executive and legislature, drafting of a new house rule, senseless
splitting of committees which raised the numbers of committees to 96,
appointment of committee chairmen, Chairmanship of NILS, issues of bills
and allotment of sponsors, chairmanship of budget consultative
committee, budget process and house inputs, the PIB, his divide and rule
approach, his frequent dealings with heads of MDA’s as if he is a
committee chairman and so many other issues. In all of these issues,
there is none that has not remained controversial till date.
All these forced me to stay away from him except on official
assignment. I can count how (many)times I have been to his office or
home. I stayed away completely. It was such a frustrating and depressing
period for me. Who will I complain to? How do I face the world and say I
got it wrong after playing such a lead role in his emergence? When you
see a house you sacrificed everything to build is falling apart and the
driver believes he is firmly in charge because he has 8 votes advantage,
you are left with no choice than to tie your seat belt for obvious
eventuality.
I must admit I made an error of judgement. I don’t know to whom and
from where I will start apologising for not heeding to wise counsel.
There is nothing I am saying now that I have not discussed or warned
speaker Dogara on the few occasions that I sorted and got private
audience with him. But he has been hijacked and surrounded himself with a
small cabal of sycophants, corrupt, mediocre, money hungry, vindictive,
envious, self-serving small minds who have already done an irreparable
damage to his person and office.
Speaker Dogara has completely derailed, remains clueless, keeps on
with an unmatched ego and surely leading the House to the biggest
scandal it may ever experience. He has failed to live above the fog in
public duty and private thinking, a direct opposite of what my favourite
American Poet Josiah Gilbet Holland prayed Lord to grant us in leaders.
All I am asking for is my right to be heard by my colleagues which
they denied me. I am calling on my colleagues to plead with Speaker
Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Lasun, Whip Doguwa and Minority leader Ogor to
stop obstructing justice and allow me my right to be heard by the House.
It is the House that will institute a special investigation on this
matter to allow me testify and provide evidence before any other
external action.
I will make a more detailed statement in due course.
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