BUDGET PADDING JIBRIRI’S ALLEGATION AND THE SEALING OF THE OFFICE OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATION

        The controversy surrounding the padding of the 2016 budget at the House of Representatives continued with the alleged sealing of the office of the house committee on appropriation by some people suspected to be operatives of the department of state services (DSS). The controversy blew open after the immediate past chairman of the House appropriation committee, Hon Abdulmumunu Jibirin, alleged that he rejected moves by principal officers of the House, led by speaker Yakubu Dagara too pad the 2016 budget to the tune of N40 billion, these members of the body of principal officers were not comfortable with my independent disposition and my refusal to cover up their unilateral decision to allocate to themselves 40 Billion Naira out of the 100Billion allocated to the entire national assembly. The four of them met and took that decision. In addition to billions of wasteful projects running over 20Billion they allocated to their constituencies. They must come out clean. My inability to admit into the budget almost 30billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers also became an issue “I wish I could but where will I get such money in a tight budget year like this? I have every documented evidence to this effect. After the submission of the first version of the budget which was returned by Mr. President, I briefed members in executive session and told them as agreed at our pre budget meeting with chairman and deputy chairman of standing committees; we simply adopted their reports with little amendments. “Nobody faulted my submission. Member insisted they must know how the 100 billion was allocated. I told them the truth. Since after that meeting, Mr. speaker with the support of the three other principal officers effectively blocked me from briefing members, insured I was not at the last executive session and refused to investigate issues I raised that I believes must be addressed if we intent to build a better budget system for the house. I gave Mr. speaker statistics of 2000 nee projects introduced into the budget by less than 10 committee chairman without the knowledge of their committee members he did nothing about it because he was part of the mess yet he is talking about improving the budget system, I did nothing wrong. “I worked within the rules of the house and instructions of Mr. Speaker during the budget period. Mr. President graciously granted myself and Sen. Cige audience. Dagara took it extremely personal that we, saw the president without his knowledge and went on to scuttled all our efforts to help the president during the budget process because he want to be seen by the president as the only good man” but Dogara, in his reply to Jibriri’s allegation. Told the public to ignore what he described as an afterthought.