Jibrin, has reiterated that allegations of budget padding levied by him
against the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and other principal members should not
be taken as an attack on the House as an institution.
In a personal statement by the lawmaker released to the media, Jibrin gave
details of how the process of screening the 2016 budget by the
appropriations committee was hijacked by Dogara and a cabal within the
House. According to him, the relationship between him and Dogara turned
sour long before the budget padding issue came to the fore.
PRESS STATEMENT BY ABDULMUMIN JIBRIN
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
N284billion? 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 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.
Abdulmumin Jibrin
24th August 2016