Abdulmumin Jibrin: How Dogara And His Cabal Hijacked 2016 Budget Screening, I Regret Working To Make Him Speaker

Former Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, Abdulmumin

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
The post Abdulmumin Jibrin: How Dogara And His Cabal Hijacked 2016 Budget Screening, I Regret Working To Make Him Speaker appeared first on Pointblank News .