The House of Representatives on Tuesday gave further explanation for its decision to replace the Kano lawmaker, Abdulmumin Jibrin, as chairman of House Committee on Appropriation.
The House said Mr. Jibrin was removed last Wednesday for his “incompetence, abuse of budgetary process and serial betrayal, including a ‘proclivity to blackmail'”.
In the explanation, which was detailed in a press release by its spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas, the House said Mr. Jibrin’s “highhandedness” could no longer be tolerated, hence his dismissal.
Mr. Namdas also responded to Mr. Jibrin’s allegations that Speaker Yakubu Dogara severely padded the 2016 budget to the tune of N40 billion.
Read the full press statement below:
TEXT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY CHAIRMAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON MEDIA & PUBLICITY, HON. ABDULRAZAK NAMDAS ON 26 JULY 2016:
You will recall that on Wednesday, July 20, 2016, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin was removed from his position as Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations and replaced by Hon. Mustapha Bala Dawaki. This was done in exercise of the powers conferred on Mr. Speaker by the House Rules to appoint and remove Committee Chairmen and Deputies in consultation with the House Leadership.
On that occasion, the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, had stated that Jibrin’s removal was a decision of the House Leadership and that incidentally, after that decision, Hon. Abdulmumin himself approached him on the floor of the House, just before he made the announcement, notifying him that the pressure on him was beyond what he could bear and that he no longer desired to continue as Chairman.
Strangely, after this, Hon. Abdulmumin went into a press war in which he is maligning, misrepresenting and denigrating the Speaker, the Leadership, the entire members of the House and indeed the House of Representatives as an institution.
It has become imperative that we clarify some of the issues he has raised to set the record straight.
2. SOME REASONS WHY HON. ABDULMUMIN JIBRIN WAS REMOVED:
His removal was based on sundry acts of misconduct, incompetence, immaturity, total disregard for his colleagues and abuse of the budgetary process, among others.
a. Immaturity and lack of capacity to handle the Office of Chairman, Appropriations:
One of the fundamental reasons why the House Leadership removed him is that, he was found not to be fit and proper person to hold such a sensitive office which exposes him to high officials of government at all levels.
Furthermore, in the course of the performance of his duties as Chairman of Appropriations Committee, it became evident that he does not possess the temperament and maturity required for such a high office.
b. Tendency and proclivity to blackmail colleagues and high government officials and misuse and mishandle sensitive government information:
He was in the habit of collating, warehousing and manipulating sensitive information to blackmail people sometimes apparently for pecuniary purposes. And by virtue of his position as Appropriations Chairman, he usually met with very high and senior public officers at all levels.
The Speaker and the Leadership were inundated with complaints by heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) over harassment from the House Appropriations Chairman to engage in conduct and acts unbecoming of their offices.
The Leadership launched an internal investigation into these allegations and was largely satisfied that action had to be taken to remove him, in the interest of the integrity of the House.
One clear example is the insertion of Funds for the so called Muhammadu Buhari Film Village in his Constituency in Kano without the consent or solicitation of Mr. President. This has brought both Mr. President and the government to disrepute.
Again, it was found out that he was fond of inserting projects into prominent persons’ constituencies without their knowledge to curry favour and possibly use it as a means of blackmail against them when necessary.
One of such is the numerous projects he claimed in a Channels TV interview in April 2016, to have cited in Mr. President’s home town of Daura, Katsina State without Mr. President’s solicitation or knowledge, in a desperate attempt to blackmail Mr. President as an answer and justification for allocation of N4.1 billion to his constituency when confronted by the interviewer.
He did not stop there. Hon Abdulmumin went about soliciting Honourable members to nominate projects for him to help them include in the Budget. When called upon to defend his actions as Appropriation’s Chairman, all he did was to be calling names of those members and the amount he helped include for them in the Budget in an unsuccessful bid to silence them. Most of the affected members took serious exceptions to his despicable antics and sundry acts of blackmail and protested to the Leadership to prevail on Hon Abdulmumin to expunge from the Budget what he claimed he allocated to them since they did not solicit for those projects.
To attempt to drag the name of Mr President, Honourable members and others to his new low through sundry acts of blackmail was one of the matters the House Leadership found off limits and totally unacceptable.
c. Unacceptable Mismanagement of the 2016 Budgetary Process:
i. It was also discovered that the former Chairman, Appropriations, discreetly and clandestinely allocated monies for projects that are not clearly defined in the budget for the purposes of exploiting the ambiguities for personal gains.
ii. Furthermore, he was found to be responsible for some bogus allocations in the budget for projects that have no locations and were apparently never meant to be executed.
iii. Hon. Jibrin’s mishandling of the 2016 budget process nearly fractured the otherwise cordial relationship between the Executive and the Legislature and brought the National Assembly and the government to public ridicule.
iv. For reasons that were not noble and not in the Public Interest, Hon Abdulmumin had initially inflated the Budget by adding about N250b more to the total figure as submitted by Mr President. This, the National Assembly Leadership out rightly rejected as a form of financial recklessness and inability to appreciate the dwindling resources available to government necessitating that we act prudently. He was directed therefore to make even further cuts below Mr Presidents total figure.
v. Hon Abdulmumin, in his desperation to ingratiate himself into the good books of the Presidency, unilaterally entered into commitments on the structure of the Budget, without the knowledge of the National Assembly Leadership, in the full knowledge, not only that he had no authority to do so, but dishonestly had no intentions of keeping to those commitments, having done the exact opposite in processing the budget details. This brought the House into disrepute as it portrayed the National Assembly and its leadership as persons who couldn’t keep their word.
vi. He displayed crass ineptitude and general lack of capacity to handle the work, thereby serving as a clog in the appropriations process. He contributed significantly to the delays in the passage of the Appropriation Bill. No one, not even his Deputy and Members of the Appropriations Committee, could reach him at certain periods during the budget process.
Indeed on the last day of the exercise, he went underground to avoid being compelled to show areas he had hidden most of the cuts he claimed he made, an act which amounted to gross insubordination and an attempt to hold captive, all involved in the budget chain to the point of entirely frustrating the passage of the Budget.
The tripartite Committee of the Senate, House and Executive thus completed the 2016 Budget without Hon Abdulmumin as he was hiding, believing that the job could not be done without him.
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