How budget-padding intrigues, politics threaten APC’s cohesion

The circumstances surrounding the exit of former chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, is still shrouded in confusion.
While the Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara, has said that the former committee boss was relieved of his appointment at the plenary session on Wednesday July 20, Jubrin has equally insisted that he left the office of his own volition.
But whether Jibrin was sacked or left on personal grounds is immaterial, the main issue is the ripples that the feud has generated in the ruling All Progressives Congress vis-a-vis the politics and intrigues behind the festering crisis.
Generally, it is believed that the ongoing hullabaloo in the House of Representatives is a fall-out of last year’s intrigues over the leadership of the House, which saw Yakubu Dogara emerge as the speaker.
There are also claims in political circles that the feud amongst the lawmakers is an extension of a perceived struggle for the control of the ruling party’s machinery between the camps of the former vice president Atiku Abubakar and the APC National Leader, Senator Bola Tinubu.
Proponents of this argument claim that Jibrin may be fronting for the powers-that-be, who, from inception, were opposed to the emergence of Dogara as the speaker and bent on his removal from the number four office in the country.
While Dogara is said to belong to Atiku’s camp, Jibrin, it was gathered, is one of the foot soldiers of the national leader of the APC, who allegedly preferred Gbajabiamila to Dogara as the speaker of the House. Other APC topshots who opposed Tinubu and ensured Dogara’s emergence was the former speaker and incumbent Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal.
Analysts are, however, of the view that the intrigues and struggle for the leadership of the House, which led to a keen contest between Dogara and Femi Gbajabiamila, who later emerged the majority leader, are again playing out from a different dimension.
What opened the old wound now festering in the House was the sudden dismissal of Jibrin by Dogara as chairman of the House committee on Appropriation and his replacement with Dawaki Mustapha, a representative from Kano State.
Jibrin was the chair of the committee when the controversial padding and re-padding of the 2016 budget happened. Indeed, no one can deny the fact that the fiasco over budget-padding slowed down the passage of the 2016 budget.
A House source, who pleaded anonymity, alleged that Jibrin single- handedly smuggled some fictitious items into the budget, without consultation with other committee members and other legislators.
According to the source, “As committee chairman, Jibrin provoked a huge controversy when his committee unilaterally removed funds budgeted for the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Railway.
“The ousted committee chairman also inflated the 2016 budget by as much as N4billion”.
But Jibrin disagreed, saying, “The appropriation committee did not write the budget for the National Assembly. If there is anybody who has evidence against me, let them come up with it or submit to the appropriate institution. But as I am talking to you now, nobody has come up with anything against me.”
It is also no longer news that the passage of the 2016 budget proposal suffered a major setback at the National Assembly following the discovery of discrepancies by the lawmakers. The reported padding of the budget by lawmakers caused President Muhammadu Buhari to withhold his assent to the budget.
Following his exit from office, Jibrin has asked the Speaker Yakubu Dogara; Deputy Speaker, Lasun Yusuff; Minority Leader, Leo Ogor ;and Chief Whip, Alhassan Garba, to resign as principal officers of the House.
Jibrin said that the above-named principal officers acted inappropriately, insisting that his refusal to yield to their schemes during the budget exercise cost him his job as chairman of the Appropriation committee.
He added that he only resigned his appointment for peace to reign in the House.
Jibrin maintained that Dogara sought to insert about N30billion worth of projects for his personal benefit in the controversial 2016 budget, while the other principal officers also made demands totaling over N70billion. He has, however, boasted that he’s in possession of a lot of documentary evidence on these requests by these principal officers, which he would make available at the appropriate time.
The two-term Kano APC lawmaker further alleged that he was removed because of his opposition to the Bill seeking immunity for presiding officers of the National Assembly, adding that Dogara was projecting the proposed legislation as a scheme to cover his tracks.
But majority of the House members have also accused Jibrin of allegedly padding the 2016 Budget to feather his own nest by inserting some N4billion worth of projects for his constituency in the budget.
Speaking through its spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas, the House accused Jibrin of blackmail and being a distraction to legislative business, saying the former committee chairman was merely belly-aching over his removal from office.
Meanwhile, the sacked appropriation committee chairman has formally submitted a petition accusing the speaker and other principal officers of budget padding to the nation’s anti-graft agencies.
Speaking at the office of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, Jibrin stated that his petition has identified 13 lawmakers, who, according to him, should be investigated.
Also in the middle of the feud is the claim that he (Jibrin) was allegedly given N500 million to plot the removal of Dogara by the powersthat- be, an allegation Jibrin has dismissed.
According to him, “It is baseless and an attempt to divert the attention of the public away from the rot in the National Assembly”.
But in an apparent move to douse tension in the House, the Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, the man allegedly being positioned by the Tinubu camp to take over from Dogara, in case the speaker is eventually consumed by the controversy, has called on Nigerians not to crucify him and the three other principal officers accused of padding the 2016 budget. Gbajabiamila also refuted allegations that he was working against the speaker over the allegations of budget padding leveled against him by the former chairman of the House committee on appropriation.
He said, “Yes, allegations have been made but I strongly believe judgment should not be passed based on allegations. We operate a constitutional democracy and we must at all times submit to its dictates and ethos. All parties are innocent until otherwise proven. This should be our guide. I plead with all members. The mudslinging must stop.”
Curiously, the budget-padding scandal in the House of Representatives is causing some ripples within the ruling APC. Some chieftains and officers of the APC are now at loggerheads over the matter.
The APC has also suddenly become a sitting duck for political analysts. The party is being criticized for sitting on the fence while its house is on fire. Incidentally, one of the critics who fired the first salvo is an officer of the party.
Angered by the scandal in the House and the seeming inaction of the ruling party’s top hierarchy, the APC Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Timi Frank, called for the resignation of the Chief John Oyegun-led National Working Committee.
Frank deplored the seeming inability of the APC leadership to resolve the ongoing crisis in the House of Representatives.
He also chided the APC leadership for its silence on the budgetpadding crisis in the House, saying the current situation was not only an embarrassment to the party, the APC-led Federal Government, but also to President Muhammadu Buhari and the country’s democracy.
“I respect the national chairman. He’s like a father to me. But again, this is an issue that has to do with our political party. If we can’t manage it, then the current leadership under Oyegun is not competent.
“I love this party so much. I don’t want us to derail from our responsibilities, as no responsible leadership will keep quiet in the face of numerous crises.
“If Oyegun cannot do this job of harmonising the party members when there are crises, I will say, without fear or favour, that he should resign and give way to people who have the capacity to do the job”.
“The truth is bitter. But I will not relent in speaking it at all times. There are so many leaders of this party that will agree with me that Oyegun is not competent enough to do this job. Although they may not have the competence to speak.
“I want to use this opportunity to beg leaders of this party, if the NWC members cannot do it, the leaders of this party should, please, wade into the current crisis rocking the House of Representatives.
“The current NWC cannot resolve the crisis rocking the National Assembly. The two persons involved are members of the APC. The party should have summoned Abdulmumin Jibrin at the early stage.
“They (party) should have intervened within 24 hours. The party is not making any move as at now. Nobody has called Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Abdulmumin,” Frank added.
Having dithered over the matter, by the time the APC intervened, formal complaints over the issue had already gone to the EFCC, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Department of State Services and the Police.
The APC in its reaction, through the Deputy National Chairman for the Northern Zone, Senator Lawal Shuaibu, described the ousted Appropriation Committee chairman’s continued media campaign against the speaker as unacceptable.
Perhaps, aware of the crack already caused the ruling party by the House impasse over the alleged padding of the budget, the national leadership of the APC, therefore, warned Jibrin to urgently put a stop to his media campaign against Dogara and the other principal officers.
Describing Jibrin’s persistent media campaign as an embarrassment, the party said it had decided to wade into the matter with a view to finding a lasting solution to the impasse.
Indeed, the party summoned the embattled lawmaker with a letter of invitation in which it chided him for resorting to a media war against his colleagues, when he had yet to exhaust the party’s internal dispute resolution mechanism.
In the letter addressed to Jibrin with reference APC/NHDQ/ NAM/01/016/14, dated August 4, 2016 and signed by the Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Shuaibu, the ruling party cautioned the lawmaker against issuing further press statement regarding the budget padding controversy.
The letter reads in part, “As a disciplined party, the constitution of our party has made adequate provisions on ways of resolving any issue among our members. It behoves on the party to take all necessary steps in order to ensure that no member of the family brings dishonour to the party.
“To say the least, it is absolutely unacceptable to resort to media war as a means of settling scores without recourse to and/or exhausting the party’s internal dispute resolution mechanism.”
Commenting on the 2016 budget padding debacle and the APC, an elder statesman and former governor of old Kaduna state, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, said, “The National Assembly has no power to re-write the budget, because they will be encroaching on the powers of the president.
“There is something behind the controversy between the Speaker of the House and former chairman committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin.
“We do not understand the reason for the controversy between the two of them.”
According to Dr. Katch Ononuju, a chieftain of the PDP, “The fight in the National Assembly has undermined the cohesion the ruling party should have.
“And because of lack of cohesion, the party is falling apart, the government cannot hold proper and that is why you see without proper coordination, the economy today is in recession; not that the ruling party doesn’t have intelligent people to actually help. The truth is, they are not together.