The embattled former Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, on Wednesday night said he would seek redress in court following his suspension by the House of Representatives.
The House on Wednesday afternoon slammed 180 legislative days —a full session— suspension on Jibrin after being found guilty of violating ethics and privileges of lawmakers.
Jibrin through his widely publicised allegations of budget fraud against the Speaker of the House and over a dozen other lawmakers had stirred controversies and subjected the House to public scrutiny since July.
But the lawmaker remained defiant, saying he had done nothing wrong and, as such, will not apologise.
“Let me say, I will never ever apologise to anybody in the House of Representatives. I did not commit any offence.”
Jibrin’s allegations against Speaker Yakubu Dogara and others stemmed from his ouster as the chair of the much-coveted Committee on Appropriation.
Dogara announced Jibrin’s removal shortly before the House proceeded on an eight-week-long recess July 20, citing budget fraud and serial betrayal of trust.
On September 21, barely a day after resuming, Dogara’s loyalists moved a motion at the plenary seeking disciplinary actions against Jibrin.
Emmanuel Orker-Jev, a lawmaker from Benue, proposed tough sanctions against Jibrin for the damage his allegations had wrought on the House.
“The image of the House has never been worse than this before. Hon. Jibrin was reckless and the allegations were false. He knew that the allegations were false and scandalous and he had no regards at all to whether the allegations were true or false,” Orker-Jev said.
The House subsequently assigned the matter to its Ethics and Privileges Committee for further investigation and to report back within a week with its findings and recommendations.
Nicholas Ossai, chairman of the committee, convened the first hearing on the matter September 23, during which Mr. Orker-Jev submitted his evidence against Jibrin.
Jibrin received an invitation to appear before the committee on Monday, but he decided toboycott the hearing, even though his demand that the sitting be thrown open to the public was met by Ossai.
Jibrin also asked his lawyer, Femi Falana, to seek discontinuation of the committee’s activities saying continuing would amount to subjudice as the matter was in court.
Ossai said Jibrin’s failure to appear before his “properly and constitutionally constituted committee” was, in effect, a defence.
The report of the committee was laid before the House plenary at noon on Wednesday.
The recommendations included a 180-day suspension, a formal letter of apology and a removal of rights to hold position of responsibility through the span of the current 8th National Assembly.
Although analysts said it was draconian and counterproductive, Jibrin’s, nonetheless, saw a bright spot in his suspension.
“At this point, I must say they freed me up to concentrate on the matter in court. I know the suspension is not going to stand, secondly, I’m going into a massive alliance with civil society groups, NGOs and well meaning Nigerian to continue to press ahead.”
Analysts also said Mr. Jibrin’s suspension did not resolve the questions of what the House would do about the allegations of budget fraud confronting it.
House spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas, did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES’ request for comment about this Wednesday night.
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