BETWEEN DOGARA AND JIBRIN OVER N100 BILLION BUDGET PADDING

The house of representative witness relative peace after the acrimonious election that brought the speaker, Yakubu Dogara, to power on June, 9^th 2016. But some persons described the situation as peace of the grave yard especially with the interest the leadership of the All Progressive Congress, APC, has showed in who became the presiding and principal officers of the nation’s green chamber.

        When the speaker announces the removal of the chairman House committee on appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin and replaced him with Mustapha Bala Dawaki, Jibrin, prior to the emergency of the house principal officers, last year, was a loyalist of one of the contestants for the position of speakership and current leader of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, who was the APC’s preferred candidate, before he was poached by Dogara to swell his camp. Jibrin’s support for Dogara contributed to the emergency of the speaker. Dogara is believed to have compensated Jibrin with the headship committed of the appropriations committee, seen as a juicy appointment in the House. However, since the president presented the 2016 budget to the national assembly, it has been one controversy after the other with accusing fingers pointed at two chairman of appropriation committee in both chambers. First, Jibrin was accused of smuggling about N4 Billion worth of projects for his constituency into the budget. He was also said to be behind the controversy surrounding the Lagos-Calabar railway project. Non submission of the budget detail to the presidency made buhari to reject it until he was finished with details. When the allegation came into the open, on the quarutum of money for Jibrin’s constituency, majority of the house member said he should be removed but because of the role he played in the emergency of Dogara the glamour was said to have been ignored then the speaker’s alleged over protection of Jibrin allegedly shorted bringing bad blood among house members. When Jibrin discovered that the principal officers had concluded to remove him, he went to the speaker at the plenary to inform him of his decision to step aside. Consequently, Dogara announced his replacement with Dawaki. But little did Dogara known that the battle had just begun between him and Jibrin. Just after plenary, in a media briefing. Jibrin said there were issues he will be discussing in due course. Jibrin in a statement, entitled “my resignation” alleged that the house principal officers tried to allocate to themselves N40 Billion out of the N100 Billion allocated to the national assembly in the 2016 budget. Consequently, he asked the principal officers to resign.

As the situation stands the fight between Dogara and Jibrin has just stared and it might lead to realignment in the house. The house will beam interesting place when the national assembly resumes from its vacation on September 13^th.