Jibrin, Dogara And Padding

The 8th National Assembly has been dogged by scandal and crises virtually every day since its inception in June last year. The Senate has had the bigger share of the crises but the latest crisis enveloping the House of Representatives could become one of the most destructive of all. It all started eleven days ago […]

The 8th National Assembly has been dogged by scandal and crises virtually every day since its inception in June last year. The Senate has had the bigger share of the crises but the latest crisis enveloping the House of Representatives could become one of the most destructive of all. It all started eleven days ago when Speaker Yakubu Dogara removed Abdulmumin Jibrin from Kano State as Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Appropriation. The next day Jibrin, who said he resigned and was not removed, accused the Speaker and three other House principal officers of trying to pad the 2016 Federal budget with personal projects worth N40 billion.
According to him, Speaker Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yussuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor together wanted to corner N40 billion worth of constituency projects out of the total N100 billion reserved for all National Assembly members. He said his problem with the House leaders began when he refused to accede to their request. Jibrin then demanded the four leaders’ immediate resignation from their offices. Speaker Dogara denied Jibrin’s charges and asked him to withdraw the allegation or else he would sue for defamation. This Jibrin vowed not to do.
The next day Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs Abdulrazak Namdas described Jibrin’s allegations as an “afterthought.” He said Jibrin was removed because House leaders have the prerogative of appointing and removing committee chairmen when they can no longer perform their duties. The controversy then got worse and worse. Jibrin upped the tempo of allegations in the next week, accusing the Speaker and other leaders of budget padding. Last Wednesday, a new group known as Transparency Group, which claimed to have got signatures from 113 MPs, distanced themselves from both sides in the dispute. They asked Dogara, Lasun, Doguwa and Ogor to individually respond to the allegations made against them. The group’s spokesman Musa Soba [APC, Kaduna] said it was wrong for House spokesman Namdas to say the House was behind the Speaker on the issue. This group also called for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission [ICPC] to wade in, investigate the matter and punish anyone found to have committed offences. 
Two days ago, eight members of the House Committee on Appropriation led by the deputy chairman Chris Emeka Azubogu [PDP, Anambra] held their own press conference and said there was no breach whatsoever of the 2016 budget process to warrant a probe of the Speaker and other principal officers. They said the allegations made by their former chairman Abdulmumin Jibrin were all lies and that Jibrin was the one who perpetrated all the irregularities in the budget. They said Jibrin once “hijacked” the budget process and disappeared for several weeks, only to resurface with a report which they said he prepared alone. According to them, following Jibrin’s “hijacking” of the budget, they approached the Speaker and demanded for his sack. Jibrin responded immediately and sensationally alleged that Dogara gave each member of the Appropriation Committee $20,000 to tell lies against him. He said rather than disappear with the budget, it was the Speaker that hijacked the budget process from him and he called on EFCC and ICPC to arrest Dogara and charge him to court for trying to pad the budget.
This scandal has many facets which have already left Nigerians confused under the welter of allegations and counter allegations. What is certain is that this affair will greatly worsen the National Assembly’s image in the eyes of Nigerians as a corrupt and scandal-ridden institution whose members are only pursuing their selfish interests and not those of the voters who elected them to represent them. Still, we will try to isolate some of the issues and persons involved. The first one is Abdulmumin Jibrin, who is driving the entire scandal. Jibrin is totally bereft of moral authority. He was the member who nominated Dogara for election as speaker and was rewarded with the plum chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. He never spoke out against the House leaders until he was sacked from the plum job. If what he is saying is true that scandal dogged every step of the budget process and he defended it all the way until he was sacked, then the summary of it is that he should shut up because he did not speak at the right time. Besides, it was long ago known that Jibrin singlehandedly inserted N4 billion worth of projects for his Bebeji/Kiru constituency, precisely what he is accusing others of trying to do.
This matter of budget padding also needs to be properly understood. For lawmakers to add or, for that matter, remove projects and votes during the budget process is not a crime. The MPs are therefore right that EFCC has no business arresting or prosecuting anyone for trying to insert a project into the budget, however selfishly. Yet, “budget padding” is a political crime in the eyes of Nigerians. Indeed, if there was an agreement to reserve N100 billion as constituency projects for all National Assembly members and four House leaders sought to corner 40% of it, then they have offended their colleagues but they hardly breached the law.
Nigerians’ main grouse against constituency projects and padded budget items is that in most cases contracts for them are awarded to the MPs themselves who in most cases misappropriate the funds and never execute the projects. It is at that point that EFCC should come in to arrest and prosecute any culprit, no matter how highly placed.