Has the system cowed Jibrin?

News accounts of the meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and the suspended former Appropriations Committee Chairman of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, were stunning to those who had followed the ‘budget padding’ scandal. It was good to know that he is well and that he is back in Nigeria. But to millions of Nigerians to whom he stood out as the only hope of reforming the National Assembly, it was alarming to read from his somber tone, his tongue-tied responses, the intimations of capitulation, resignation, even fatalism.
He spoke of an opportunity to learn. “It is a learning curve. So, it is fine.” He did not elaborate on what he learnt. He made allusions to his case languishing in the courts. He had sued the House challenging his one-year suspension. Did he seek the President’s help in his ordeal? His unwillingness to answer that question was heart-rending. In 2016 when he blew the whistle on the House Leadership for corruption and budget padding, he had on several occasions sought the face of the president to no avail. To many Nigerians the President abandoned Jibrin to the hyenas at a time he (Buhari) needed to introduce the corruption fight in the National Assembly. The President’s silence during the raging ‘padding’ episode was viewed by many as the beginning of the end of the fight and the loudest confession of its limited aims and scope.
The National Assembly is by law at the centre of Nigeria’s representative democracy. A government policy with no roots, or a modicum of support, in those chambers, cannot claim to be of the slightest national importance. On the issue of corruption, there is unanimity that the National Assembly is the biggest collection of the most ethically challenged Homo sapiens on the planet, which explains why members are dead set against the fight against corruption. Nigerians knew it. Jibrin confirmed it. The House oligarchy fought back. The presidency, scared of a truly justified confrontation, chickened out.
Several Nigerians will emerge in the current election cycle to run for president, mostly to satisfy their ambitions or their vanity. Jibrin, on the other hand, if he joins the race, as many Nigerians had hoped, would be the only one among them with a genuine and honest cause – to reform, if not revolutionise, the National Assembly.
For although the Assembly is pivotal to democracy, it is the weakest link in the chain. As things stand today, there cannot be an honest government in Nigeria without an honest National Assembly. Where there is no honest government, it is impossible to have honest administration of anything from customs duties through drivers’ licensing to police functions. It is an honest National Assembly that would scrutinize budgets, not pad them, oversee contracts, not inflate them, investigate agencies for malfeasance, not collect bribes from them.
In a true democratic environment, Jibrin is one of a few Nigerians who can convincingly outline a case to run for president. He is the only Nigerian who has served in the National Assembly at the topmost level who has spoken convincingly and honestly that the Assembly is not only corrupt but institutionally corrupt. And he had outlined measures to reform it. That is what makes him unique. Here is a leader with a just cause,who seems to share the frustrations of Nigerians on the National Assembly, who is offering informed ideas on how to solve the problems. And, of course, he must be placed side-by-side a motley of individuals posturing now as presidential candidates who are running to satisfy their ambitions, their vanity, backed by their enormous wealth.
Nigerians find fault with the National Assembly on various fronts, the most often mentioned being its unnatural, extraordinary earnings which, in turn, have further corrupted the chambers. In other countries, people who wish to make money don’t run for Congress in the US, for example. Remember that initially it was not quite a paid job. Members were paid per diem $6 (six dollars) and it took decades to increase it to $8 (eight dollars) per day of sitting. It took nearly a century before a regular salary was fixed. Today, a US Congress man or woman earns an average of $174,000 a year. Members of the National Assembly are thought to earn eight times that, ‘thought’ because for 17 years the pay of the Assembly men and women was held as some of the deepest secrets of government. In addition, the venality displayed by members is such that often critics attack the assembly more for the pay issues than on the more substantive issues of performance.
Thus the National Assembly, the legislative branch of the Nigerian government, is the sickest of the three branches. Yet it is the most critical constitutionally-empowered institution capable of engineering the development of effective democracy as different from pseudo-democracy. It is one institution which can serve as a credible platform to fight corruption. Now it is on the opposite side of the fight. Rightly configured, it can bring efficiency to government,which it is incapable of doing now. It can serve as a trust-worthy fact-finding institution in matters of public dispute or public policy, which is now beyond its capacity. The National Assembly can advance alternative policy positions and be able to second-guess the executive branch. Now it lacks both the capacity and the incentive to do so. It should constitute the brain trust of the nation by helping the country tackle its difficult and delicate problems. It ought to hold hearings and take evidence on contentious issues in a manner that commands respect and credibility as the US Congress does on divisive issues. Indeed, the two chambers are today the opposite of what they should be. Unless the Assembly is re-configured, it would not matter what it does.
Abdulmumin Jibrin did not blink when he told Channels TV late in July 2016 that, “yes, …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 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 am happy that something has triggered it (the budget scandal)… to address the issues at the National Assembly to force reforms… This 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 believe that when one is chairman of finance, you have to live and die with certain information. Also, if you are chairman of Appropriation (Committee), you have to be custodian of information, meaning there are a lot of things you must not say.”
If he has not been cowed by the system, Jibrin is one Nigerian that deserves a hearing. He was not afraid to speak out; he sounded honest and committed; he was not out for vengeance but reform.