More stench oozed out of the troubled chamber of the House of Representatives on Thursday as a former Chairman, Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has vowed to continue making fresh allegations against the four principal officers until they were prosecuted.
In his latest question, which he numbered 21, Jibrin said the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, allegedly “diverted” a Federal Government water project to his farm in Nasarawa State.
“Allegation no 21 to Mr. Speaker: why did you fraudulently divert a Federal Government water project to your farm in Nasarawa State? How are you funding the farm?” he asked on his twitter handle.
Jibrin, who called himself an “accidental activist,” boasted that his dream was to reform the entire National Assembly, starting with the House.
He explained, “When a new speaker emerges and the other principal officers replaced, I will write to the presiding officers of both chambers to commence a radical internal reform in the entire National Assembly beyond budget to cover performance assessment, running cost and allowances, investigations, etc.
“If the reform so done on the National Assembly is not made public latest by December, I shall take it up and lay before the general public even if I am alone.
“The idea is to do a cleanup, flush out corruption and corrupt members so that in 2019, only corrupt-free people, who want to serve, will come in.”
Jibrin had alleged on Thursday last week that the four principal officers requested the inclusion of N40bn projects in the 2016 budget, besides sundry projects in sums ranging from N20bn to N30.
He claimed that his refusal to oblige the four principal officers and his opposition to several financial infractions, were responsible for his sacking by Dogara on Wednesday, last week.
Asked to react to the allegation that the speaker diverted a Federal Government water project to his farm, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Abdulrazak Namdas, said it served no purpose responding to Jibrin’s allegations any further.
Namdas said the House had made enough reactions to his allegations and would wait till resumption on September 13.
Meanwhile, members of the Gombe State Caucus of the House of Representatives on Thursday disassociated themselves from the allegations of “budget padding,” Jibrin made against Dogara, and three other principal officers.
The other three are the Deputy Speaker, Yussuff Lasun; the Chief Whip, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa; and the Minority Leader, Leo Ogor.
The caucus said the 2016 Appropriation Act was duly signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, and could no longer be described as padded.
It noted that it was “criminal” and “illegal” for anybody to call an existing law a padded law.
“Failure to even implement any part of the Act is an illegality.
“Mr. President himself, who signed the Act, knows it. The only way anything can be dropped from that Act is by referral to the same National Assembly to make any changes”, one of the members of the caucus, Mr. Yunusa Ahmad-Abubakar, told a news conference in Abuja.
Meanwhile, in his response to the Gombe lawmakers, Jibrin said they merely repeated the “lies” Dogara and the three others made his colleagues to believe.
The former appropriation chairman, who advised them to read the text of his reply to Dogara, added that two members of the Gombe caucus were on the list he would forward to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for investigation.
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