If there are still a few good men left in the National Assembly, they should do themselves a favour and persuade the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr. Yakubu Dogara, to resign.
From Tuesday’s proceedings, it would appear the House members have resolved to fall back on their traditional reaction when their hands are caught in the cookie jar.
That pattern has been that members would pretend that the scandal is of little moment, has short shelf life, and would soon evaporate, then to feign righteous indignation at accusations of corruption, to deny, deny and deny, and, then, assume that Nigerians would soon forgive and forget and, in any case, what can they do even if they didn’t?
The Representatives should show Nigeria some respect even if they have lost theirs. By numerous contemptible acts, the Reps have now become the most visible symbols of corruption, greed, and depravity. They remind Nigerians of the decades of power without accountability, and of dictatorial impunity. The National Assembly has given democracy a bad name.
Since the 21st July when the House Appropriations Committee Chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin, put in writing his own side of the story concerning his dismissal by the Speaker, the National Assembly has taken a more sinister hue and those who had feared the worst, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, now feel vindicated.
Jibrin had called for the immediate resignation of Speaker Dogara and the House leadership citing reasons of integrity and corruption. The continued stay of the Speaker and his cohorts on their posts in the House has therefore become untenable in the absence of any credible rebuttal of the allegations made by Jibrin.
Jibrin was specific in his accusations against the Speaker; his deputy,Yusuff Lasun; the Whip, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa; and the minority Leader, Leo Ogor.
The four men met and unilaterally decided to allocate to themselves projects worth N40 billion taken from the N100 billion earmarked for the constituency projects of all lawmakers in the 2016 budget appropriations. This decision was “in addition to billions of wasteful projects running over N20 billion they allocated to their constituencies…My inability to admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers, also became an issue.”
Jibrin extended his accusations to the chairmen of 10 standing committees of the House who inserted 2,000 projects into the budget with the Speaker’s complicity. He named those chairmen in his letter to the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress. “I gave the Speaker statistics of 2000 (two thousand) new projects introduced into the budget by less than 10 committee chairmen without the knowledge of their committee members. He did nothing about it because he was part of the mess yet he is talking about improving the budget system.”
The niggling details of the budget scandal cannot be rehashed within this limited space, but the accusations have not been contradicted and are too serious to be swept under the carpet. Indeed the total amount of illegal insertions into the budget runs to N480 billion, which is why it is probably the most gigantic heist ever devised by corrupt men to loot the country in the history of Nigeria.
In addition to the budget scandal, Jibrin alleged that the Speaker had diverted a federal government water project into his private farm in Nasarawa State. He also queried how Dogara was funding the farm which had suddenly exploded from a six-hectare enterprise into a nearly 100-hectare farm equipped with structures and machinery estimated at hundreds of millions of Naira. Jibrin also alleges that Speaker Dogara receives an additional N25 million each month from the coffers of the National Assembly.
Now, Jibrin stands out not only for his courage but in his forthrightness about these accusations. Not since the days of Godwin Daboh has Nigeria witnessed comparable courage to question the integrity of the powerful. He cannot be accused of being envious of the Speaker, for he was the architect of Dogara’s enthronement, even against the wishes of his party men in the beginning of the 8th National Assembly, a role he copiously apologized for in his letter to the APC chairman, John Oyegun.
The budget scandal goes beyond anything that could be remotely considered an internal affair of the National Assembly. Budget padding is probably the worst form of abuse of power of the purse granted the National Assembly by the Constitution. It is probably for that reason that the National Executive Committee of APC hesitated in shutting up Jibrin. You cannot be prosecuting a crusade against corruption and at the same time emasculating whistle-blowers.
Jibrin sounds truthful and, without prejudice to whatever was his record, he has the appearance of a reformer. His words indicate his aim is not to demonize the Speaker but to reform the National Assembly.
For the first time in history a member of the National Assembly looked into the TV cameras and admitted that, “yes, we (National Assembly members) are corrupt…there is corruption in the House of Representatives, and not only is there corruption, there is institutional corruption.” “These are things that I can prove and it is what my struggle is all about…the only thing is that we have been living in denial. I have been there for five years and I have seen a lot and I’m happy something has triggered it (this scandal to enable the nation) address issues at the National Assembly to force reforms. The issue is going to lead to a revolution in the National Assembly.”
“My problem was that I was not talking. I came to the National Assembly and I was made to understand that when one is chairman of finance (committee) you have to live and die with certain information. Also, if you are chairman of Appropriations (committee), you have to be custodian of information, meaning there are a lot of things you must not say.” Jibrin is therefore Nigeria’s deus ex machina to save Nigeria’s democracy and reformulate the National Assembly into returning to its original mission.
He presents a unique opportunity which the country has not had in 17 years to finally get the institution right. He must be protected and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) must be given the task of investigating the budget scandal.
The corruption infrastructure has been readied to destroy him, impugn his integrity, and drag him in the mud. The House is in its classic conspiratorial mode, and a vote of confidence in the Speaker has been forged. But an overwhelming majority of Nigerians know that Jibrin rings true, and might turn out to be the savior of the National Assembly.
Not since Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai accused Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina of asking him for a N54 million bribe for his confirmation as minister has any Nigerian staked so much – his position, his integrity and his future — to fight for a corrupt-free National Assembly. The National Assembly is currently led by men who are best at artifice, tricky Dicks, and dissemblers. Democracy requires a measure of honesty to work. That is what the fight is about. The country must encourage people like Jibrin.