IF there was any doubt about the propensity of the men and women at most levels of leadership for feathering their own nests at the expense of the people they claim to be serving, the ongoing brouhaha in the House of Representatives over the “padding of the 2016 Budget” is yet another convincing instance. Nigerians have all along been suspicious and unhappy about the so-called constituency projects of members of the National Assembly, for which each of them collects at least N27 million every three months. There has never really been anything significant to show for these huge sums collected from year to year, other than the occasional dysfunctional and mostly abandoned boreholes that some of them site at innocuous spots in their constituencies.
In some instances, some of these disused boreholes identified as “constituency projects” are located right inside the homes of the legislators. In other instances, the constituency projects come in the form of few bicycles and other skill acquisition items that the legislators give to selected members of their constituencies when elections are approaching. One thing that is clear is that Nigerians have hardly ever gotten good value for the huge sums appropriated for these lawmakers’ constituency projects and it was, therefore, not surprising that President Muhammadu Buhari said the nation could not fund the N100 billion constituency projects.
But, beyond the funding or otherwise of these controversial projects, the can of worms recently opened by the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, who was recently relieved of his position, stinks to the high heavens. Although many people have been coming up with different rationalisations of his motives for blowing the lid off the dirty schemes of his co-legislators, one thing that is clear is that many of the House members are not the patriotic, self-sacrificing lawmakers that they hold themselves out to be. Instead, each of them is seemingly in a rat race to see that he corners as much as the national patrimony to himself and, maybe, his constituency as is possible.
The missiles that are being shot from the camp of Jibrin and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara on the “padding” affair are, indeed, of very high calibre. Jibrin has alleged that the Speaker, his Deputy, Yusuff Lasun, Chief Whip, Alhassan Ad Doguwa, Minority Leader, Leo Ogor and 11 other committee chairmen were involved in the padding. He has also named another House member whose office running cost, as he put it, “would shock all Nigerians”.
Jibrin is not the only one making allegations. Interestingly, the Speaker’s camp has come up with its own list of allegations against Jibrin, who was said to have been removed from office for wrongdoing. He was also alleged to have been involved in budget padding and the introduction of certain projects to please the president, even when such projects were not in the original proposals from the Presidency. So, it is now a case of “You Takar me, I Daboh you,” with allegations and counter-allegations flying around like cornflakes in the winds. Jibrin has sent his allegations against the Speaker and the other lawmakers to the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC). Already, allegations are also flying that the allegations against Speaker Dogara are part of a grand design to bring him down by the forces in the All Progressives Congress (APC) which did not want him to emerge as Speaker in the first instance. Yet, others say Jibrin is an innocent man that was relieved of his chairmanship of the Appropriation Committee for his refusal to “play ball” on the budget padding.
One thing that is glaring is that the situation in the House of Reps needs the investigation of a disinterested party to arrive at the facts of each of these allegations. This scandal, that is coming on the heels of the cases of forgery and false declaration of assets by the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, the recent federal lawmakers’ quest for immunity and life pensions, and their outrageous jumbo salaries that are among the highest paid to any set of lawmakers anywhere in the world, has once again brought our lawmakers into disrepute.
The ball is, however, now in the court of the anti-graft agencies to determine the veracity of the allegations and counter-allegations of wrongdoing by the lawmakers.
One must not but say the conduct of our lawmakers under the present dispensation has not been impressive. Even their despicable act of moving en masse to the Code of Conduct Bureaux (CCB) in solidarity with Senator Saraki during his trial did not project them as being serious with their responsibilities.
It is worrisome that scant attention is being paid to urgent issues on the economy and other critical areas of our national life by these lawmakers. This scenario ought to change if our democracy is not to be derailed. Nigeria is already in “technical recession”, as we have been told by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. There is increasing militancy in the Niger Delta which produces the oil on which the Nigerian economy is based. The consequence of the problem of insurgency in the northern part of the country is visible in the number of severely malnourished children in our Internally Displaced Persons camps and is already making headline news in some parts of the world. The nation is yet to get a handle to the problem of unemployment and inflation, while the power sector is yet to meet the yearnings of the people for stable electricity supply.
These are the issues that should be engaging the attention of any serious legislature, not these endless wranglings and supremacy battles. Nigerians expect the lawmakers to quickly get over these internal problems and address the tasks for which they were elected.
Reports say that the APC leadership has invited Jibrin to shed light on his allegation of budget padding against Dogara. That is as it should be. The party has a responsibility to call the lawmakers elected under its flag to account for all their activities as these will reflect on the people’s assessment of their party in the long run. The challenge before the EFCC now is to unravel the truth of all these allegations to rest the controversies once and for all so that the lawmakers can get on with the business of lawmaking for which they were elected.
MAILBOX
The coup in Turkey
Erdogan will obviously be unhorsed by the military in the next attempt. The military in Turkey is the custodian of secularity while the man wants to enforce a theocratic state on his people. He is a dictator who puts opposition in difficult angles. He orchestrated a phantom coup and used the opportunity to humiliate the military.
Dr. Nwagwu C.C., 08037055728