Dogara: Reps divided over N40b budget padding scandal

FROM KEMI YESUFU, ABUJA

MEMBERS of the House of Representatives are sharply divided over revelations by ousted Chairman of the House Committee on Appropria­tions, Abdulmumin Jibrin that Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his Deputy Yussuf Lasun pad­ded the 2016 budget with N40 billion for projects to be locat­ed in their constituencies.

Jibrin in his statement issued on Thursday night, entitled: “My Resignation”, demanded that Dogara, Lasun, Majority Whip Alhassan Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor resign because they allocated N40 billion to themselves in the last budget appropriation.

“These members of the body of principal officers were not comfortable with my in­dependent disposition and my refusal to cover up their uni­lateral decision to allocate to themselves N40 billion out of the N100 billion allocated to the entire National Assembly. “The four of them met and took that decision. In addition to bil­lions of wasteful projects run­ning over N20 billion they al­located to their constituencies. They must come out clean”, the statement further read.

In a swift response to the al­legations made by Jibrin, Chairman House Com­mittee on Media, Abdul­razak Namdas issued a statement describing the lawmaker’s allegations as unfounded. Speaking with Saturday Sun, Nam­das reiterated that the ex committee chairman’s al­legations are “spurious”.

Asked of the possibil­ity of the House institut­ing disciplinary action against Jibrin, since its leadership has dismissed his statement as untrue, Namdas declined com­ment.

In his reaction, Ogor described the allega­tions made by Jibrin as laughable, adding that he didn’t “ask for any­thing extra” with regard to constituency projects. “These allegations are laughable. I will not go into any altercations with anybody.

But as far as I am con­cerned these stories from Jibrin are fabricated” he said.

Meanwhile, investiga­tions by Saturday Sun in­dicates that while a num­ber of lawmakers see the sacked chairman’s whis­tleblowing efforts as be­lated, a few members are highly embarrassed by his revelations as it has further painted the House in bad light, even as a few other have tagged the embattled lawmaker a sacrificial lamb, who the House leadership is will­ing to heap all the blame for the controversies gen­erated by the handling of the 2016 budget.

Meanwhile, Jibrin’s lawyers, Mohammed Abdulhamid; A. B .Bako and Chukwuma Nwachukwu, in a press statement, entitled, “At­tempt to blackmail and harass our client Hon­ourable Abdulmumin Jibrin with a view to ob­struct justice”, noted that Speaker Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, House Whip Hon. Alhas­san Ado Doguwa, and House Minority Leader, Hon. Leo Ogor, have resorted to blackmail their client into silence and to further harass his person and family us­ing the instrument of the obstructive coercion and perversion of due pro­cess by deploying, albeit illegally some elements of the Nigeria Police.

The statement reads in part: “You will recall that our client is in dis­pute with the said quartet over his refusal and in­ability to admit into the National Budget of 2016, the sum of about 30 bil­lion naira at the behest of these quartet and also his refusal to cover up the decision of Speaker Dogara and others’ uni­lateral decision to distrib­ute to themselves 40 bil­lion naira out of the 100 billion naira allocated to the entire National As­sembly in addition to what our client consid­ers as wasteful projects of over 20 billion naira to their (quartet) various constituencies.

“ We want to state un­equivocally that our cli­ent stands by the above assertion and will at the appropriate time prove same”