Jibrin; the whistle blower

The controversies, intrigues and behind the scene deals that characterized the passage of the 2016 budget, especially in the National Assembly keep unfolding as Abudlmumin Jibrin who was sacked as Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Appropriation Committee seemed determined to spill as much beans as possible about the secret deals that marred the process.

The lawmaker  had earlier said he stopped the speaker, Yakubu Dogara and three other principal officers of the House- Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, House Whip Alhassan Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor from padding the budget with about N70 billion in an earlier statement.

On Sunday, he released another statement in which he not only alleged intimidation by the leadership of the lower chamber over his earlier, but also categoricall stated that the allegations related to only the four principal officers he mentioned.

He further revealed how the Speaker hijacked the Appropriation Committee Secretariat from him and relocated it to a secret location where, as he claimed, “all sort of insertions were made into the budget.”

Jibrin said he had consequently refused to sign the budget, leading to a “massive crisis” until the intervention of Sen. Danjuma Goje, the Chairman of the Senate Appropriation Committee. He alleged that the Speaker, in, his words “an unprecedented display of greed”, then went on to input all sorts of padding into the budget .

Jibrin said: “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.

“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!

“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.”