The sacked Chairman, Committee on Appropriation, House of Representatives, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, has made more revelations about House members who participated in the padding of the 2016 Budget, giving their names as Hon. Jagaba Adams, Hon Jika (both Chairmen, Interior and Police Affairs respectively, Hon. Muhammed Bago and Hon. Muhammed Zakari, but decided to withhold the name of the last person.
He said: “I need not to introduce the last person to Nigerians. You all know him better and know what he is good at best.”
He however, added that his allegations are only against the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, House Whip and Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, but not the institution as Speaker Dogara desperately wants Honorable members and the general public to believe.
Speaking further in a statement released over the weekend, he disclosed: “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, but 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 this 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 leveled 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.”
Jibrin further explained: “The game plan was to arrest me and dump me in police net while 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 would have it, I had travelled out of town before they could execute their evil plan. God is always with the innocent. 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, 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?”
Jibrin also alerted that the principal officers 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 him into silence, explaining that “until yesterday, the police were laying siege by my house, blocking the entrance and exit doors, 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,” he said.
He therefore urged his colleagues and the general public to call on Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the three other principal officers to stop their desperate attempt to drag the entire House of Representatives into this matter
•Photo shows Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin.
NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s leading online newspaper. Published by Africa’s international award-winning journalist, Mr. Isaac Umunna, NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s first truly professional online daily newspaper. It is published from Lagos, Nigeria’s economic and media hub, and has a provision for occasional special print editions. Thanks to our vast network of sources and dedicated team of professional journalists and contributors spread across Nigeria and overseas, NEWS EXPRESS has become synonymous with newsbreaks and exclusive stories from around the world.