Mr Chairman, you will recall the crisis during and after the election of Speaker Yakubu Dogara,Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun and Whip Alhassan Doguwa. You will also recall the leading role I played in bringing these 3 Principal Officers on board
I recollect with deep regret and pains and can still hear echo of your voice in the make or mar meeting at the ICC shouting "sit down Jibrin, sit down Jibrin, Jibrin sit down" " you dare not walk out of this hall Jibrin"! Sen Lawali S watched helplessly with the box of ballots as I forced myself up, stood my grounds, made my points, held the hands of Dogara, a green snake under green grass, pulled him out of the hall.
You saw what I didn't see.of the saying that " what an old man can see, a young man cannot even if he climbs a tree" The rest is history.
The role I played to the best of my conscience at then sir was patriotic. I analysed and felt Speaker Dogara has a better temperament.
Speaker Dogara is of the habit of taking standing Committee Chairmen to swear Oath of allegiance before Omisore
During the build up to the appointment of committee Chairmen, I had a terrible disagreement with him. I stayed far away from him, I was in London when he insisted he wants to see me. He came to my hotel room and we talked for hours.
I gave him a lot of advice but I never knew it was getting in from one ears and out from the other.
He was more interested in telling me about the forces who didn't want me to be appointed Chairman appropriation as if I cared. He mentioned Former Speaker and present Governor of Sokoto state Aminu Waziri Tambuwal as one. That is how narrow minded Dogara can be.
I always maintained to him that being Chairman appropriation is not in any way a favour to me. I dashed him money, he thanked me and left.
The following day, he pleaded to me to join him at a house in london. I went and I saw him seated very comfortably with Sen Omisore
It was there he said he was going to appoint me Chairman appropriation and I should be reporting to Omisore! I was completely shocked.
A nice lunch was served, we eat and We left. there are CCTV in london. I confided in a highly placed person who I wouldn't want to mention.
He advised me to be calm and focus on my job.My refusal to comply with such questionable instructions largely accounted for the anger of Mr Speaker towards me. It was much later that I realized that Sen Omisore had adopted Speaker Dogara as a god son since their days as Chairman appropriation and house services in the 6th Assembly respectively.
Studying Speaker Dogara in the last one year and many things I know that it may not be proper to mention here, he does not wish the APC well, he is a cheap pretender, he is not loyal to the party and he will provide a solid platform for a massive attack against our party in the nearer future. I know what Iam talking about.
In a nutshell, it will be dangerous and potentially disastrous for the party to keep Speaker Yakubu Dogara on that seat.
I wish to state that I deeply regret the role I played in the emergence of Yakubu Dogara as Speaker.
I seek the understanding and forgiveness from you, our leaders and every member of the APC family that was hurt by my action hurts. I will dedicate and completely commit my self to achieving the goals set out by the party. This case should serve as a lesson.
BACKGROUND OF THE CURRENT CRISIS:
Mr Chairman sir, let me reemphasis that I did nothing wrong. I committed no offense, I have never abused my office or corruptly enrich myself in the 5years I have spent.No one has ever accused me of corruption in the House until lately, after raising allegations against Dogara, corruption started fighting back. They starting bringing up baseless allegations Iam pretty sure the anti corruption agencies will do their job and all our party men and women will know the truth at the end of the day.
My offense has been my refusal to be used as conduit to to facilitate free flow of corruption in the House of Representatives. I came under severe pressure during the budget period to break procedures and commit fraudulent actions. When they could not use me, Mr Speaker connived with few committee chairmen and they opened a bazaar of corrupt insertions into the budget. I complained to Speaker he did nothing. I later he, deputy, Whip&Minority Leader were the ring Leaders of that corrupt cabal in the House. All they wanted was to do away with me, considered the obstacle. The Speaker and the 3 others were in the tick of the plot. I did my work as committee chair diligently. followed laws&procedures. I have all documents & video recordings of proceedings intact.
Problem started when the President returned the budget. I was invited to a meeting of body of Principal officers,The speaker shamelessly denied he knew about the insertions. He knew that he&the 3 other Principal Officers connived with some Committee Chairmen to commit the fraud. By then, I could not take the pressure anymore from Nigerians who thought I wrote the budget alone while Speaker, the 3 other Principal Officers&chairmen involved wickedly kept quiet.i told the meeting clearly that they were the culprit5. The meeting became very tensed to a point where Lasun and Ogor wanted to exchange blows with me. I maintained my calm and to the God Almighty that I worship, I apologized to them. I was overwhelmed but I knew I cannot continue to cover up anything against It was at that meeting that they asked me not to tell my colleagues at the executive session that the four of them stole 40billion out of the 100 billion meant for constituency projects. I told them clearly I cannot. We then moved into the executive session. Members were angry at me.They have every reason to be bcos they do nothave full info of what transpired I was called to adress the session I prayed quietly and stepped forward. They asked me about cuts in budget, Speaker knew the answer&kept quite, they asked about the insertions, all the culprits were seated there but the Speaker kept quiet, they asked about their missing 40billion, the Speaker kept quiet.
At that point, I told them that the Speaker and the 3 other Principal Officers took the money and shared it to themselves and few others. The session went balistic!I was scared to say more than that.After that meeting,the Speaker and the 3 others became even more angry at me. They were determined to embarrass and disgrace me using every means possible. They just wanted me out of the job. They quickly in an arrangement strange to parliamentary practice set up a harmonization committee and appointed one of them the Deputy Speaker, Lasun as Chairman all to send a message to members and the public that there is no more confidence in me and Iam the culprit and provide a more comfortable avenue to continue there fraud and poisonous insertion in the budget. Lasun did a great job.He indeed FANTASTICALLY loaded the budget with poisonous insertions for the QUARTET aided and abetted by the Speaker. In protest that my secretariat was taken away from me on 2 occasions for such insertions to be made on the instruction of Speaker Dogara, I refused to sign the harmonized version until a compromise was brokered by Sen Danjuma Goje that the Deputy Speaker who headed the harmonization should also sign. After the budget was signed into law, the QUARTET resumed their hunting for Hon Jibrin, I was already fed up but I was sure I will stand up to them and expose them. The immunity debate gave me a chance to prove to them. Everybody knows he and his gang of few other members like Hon Herma Hembe were very corrupt front, back, left, right and center but he always replied me that he would call me later so we could discuss.
On Wednesday the 20th July I went up to him and told him I will announce my resignation if he doesn't. He said to me let's meet at 10pm in the night. They just wanted me disgraced out of office, He went on at the end to announced that I had resigned but that they already sacked me on allegation of offenses regarding the 2016 budget, it is important to say my side of the story so that Nigerians will know I committed no offense. I was worried about my image I have family&kids. The best I can bequeath to them is a good name. I released dozens of allegations against the Speaker and 12 others. Until date they have not responded to any of the allegations. In contrast, I have responded to all the allegations they raised agains me.
I proceeded to submit petitions based on the allegations to the EFCC, ICPC, DSS and the NPF for investigation and prosecution. Mr Speaker sponsored blackmail to drag executive, senate&top govt officials into this matter with cheap lies that the padding allegations, if dealt with decisively will bring down the whole country. What a blackmail on the entire country! He told to the world that padding is not an offense.days later,he boasted that anti graft agencies cannot investigate or prosecute him, thats why he shunned all their invitations.There was uproar all over against Mr Speaker.Yet,in another shameful&disgraceful about turn.
Mr Chairman, I have explained all this so that you will have a proper context to this crisis. Let me state that padding is an offense. Padding can be tried under Nigerian laws. The Speaker can be investigated and prosecuted contrary to his claim I have pledged maximum cooperation to the anti-corruption agencies and I will provide them with guide and assistance on how to unravel all these crimes&theft ofour common wealth.For instance,let's say an item in a budget proposed by the executive in Power forthe purchase of a transformer cost N2million&same amount budgeted. If the Chair House Committee on power because he has the "powers" to appropriate decides to add N3million to jack up the allocation to N5million when it is Known that the transformer cannot cost morethan 2million naira, what do you call that? That essentially means APPROPRIATION FRAUD! And such a chairman is a FRAUDSTER, a common criminal. Also, let's say he decides to irrationally reduce the amount to 500,000 thousand naira knowing full well that the said amount cannot buy the transformer, what do you call that? APPROPRIATION SABOTAGE&such a chair is a SABOTEUR.
DETAILS OF ALLEGATIONS:
Mr Chairman, I have decided to capture properly the allegations I leveled against the Speaker and 12 others so that you will understand the gravity of the matter at hand and also understand that the allegations are beyond budget issues and includes tens of other criminal allegations that cannot be swept under the carpet.
The allegations are against the following: Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun,House Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa, Minority Leader Leo Ogor, Hon Herma Hembe, Hon Mohammed Bago, Hon Zakari Mohammed, Hon Chike Okafor, Hon Dan Asuquo, Hon Jagaba Adams Jagaba, Hon Haliru Jika, Hon Babanle Ila, Hon Abonta Abonta.
Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the three others fraudulently shortchanged the House of Representatives and abused their offices by unilaterally taking away 40 Billion out of the 100 Billion allocated for constituency projects and distributing same to themselves and the trio of Deputy Speaker Lasun, House Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor and others without the approval of the House. Speaker Yakubu Dogara approached me with personal requests of about 30 Billion Naira to be inserted into the 2016 budget. My refusal to get that done caused a major rift between them which has escalated beyond measure, Speaker Dogara, Lasun and Doguwa are already a baggage that the APC should off load! Same for Minority leader, Leo Ogar to the PDP!
The Speaker also gave directions to me to create a strange line item in the service wide vote to allow for a 20 Billion Naira insertion into the budget under the name of National Assembly. I refused to accede to this request. The Speaker fraudulently diverted a FG water project to his farm in Nasarawa and the source of funding for the farm remain questionable. The Speaker also made a fraudulent plan to deduct from funds meant for members office running cost to fund a so-called dubious mortgage. The Speaker abused his office by directing an agency to grant loans and also arrange frequent "private"meetings with heads of MDA's acting in collusion with Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun and Hon. Herman Hembe. It is a matter of public knowledge in the House that Lasun had openly accused Hembe of having carted away some millions from the illicit money. The Speaker has ordered that all the computers in the appropriation secretariat be shut down and moved to his office whilst the secretariat staff are being harassed to keep quiet and suppress facts relating to the entire budget and there has been attempts by agents of the speaker to burgle our client’s office to steal vital documents.
Mr Speaker is using his office as Speaker to sabotage the on going investigation.
Just to bring you up to date Sir,I have forwarded to the anti corruption agencies documents showing how Speaker Dogara and the 3 others allocated the 40billion they stole from 100billion for constituency, how they inserted about 20billion naira of wasteful projects, how they cornered 20% of inputs for the house after the harmonization exercise, attempts to force in about 30billion naira of wasteful projects into the budget,attempt to force me to introduce a strange line item and insert about 20billion naira in the service wide vote using the name of NASS, evidence showing that indeed about 10 standing committees of the house made about 2000 insertions
WAY FORWARD:
sir, you will agree with me that the world is watching to see how the APC will deal with this issue of incontrovertible corruption in high places. We have a golden chance to show the world there is zero tolerance for corruption in our great party the APC. Even more, is the willingness of a serving member in my person who understands these issues and who has offered to stand as witness and provide support to anti corruption agencies to investigate the allegations thoroughly and commence prosecution in earnest. There is no better way of demonstrating our commitment to fight against corruption than to use Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the 12 others as example.
You will also agree with me that in the face of all these allegations and back and forth in his utterances, Speaker Yakubu Dogara and the other Principal Officers have lost the moral ground to continue in office.
They have become a baggage that should be off loaded by the APC before they inflict an irreparable damage to the Party
From every part of Nigeria and the world, that is the opinion of people. The party must act very quickly and decisively.
In his usual mischievous manner, Speaker Dogara is bandying around religious and ethnic cards.He has so soon forgotten those that led the campaign that brought him up as Speaker in the first place.
As a way forward, I wish to recommend the following;
* To direct Speaker Yakubu Dogara to reconvene the House and step down with other accused Principal Officers immediately
* To allow for internal and external investigation without interference so that sanity will return
* To nominate a Speaker Pro Tempore and mobilize our members to support him to take over and adjourn the House until when we are due for resumption in September. This will give room for consultations on the election of a new Speaker when we resume
* To Insist on internal reform of the activities of the House and ensure that the new Speaker implements it fully.
* To discuss on the possibility of returning the N100billion constituency component of budget under any of our laws so that all stolen money can be returned particularly the 40billion naira and equitably distributed to all constituencies.
* To discuss if the party so desire, Iam offering to identify all the toxic insertions by Speaker Dogara and 12 others in the budget so that they can be removed. We have different laws under which that can be done.
I believe if these recommendations are implemented,it will go along way in resolving the crisis&provide the ventilation for the House to commence process of internal reforms and self cleansing to repair its battered image and restore the trust of Nigerians in the House. This will also provide a relief for the party and the government that had been completely embarrassed with this development.
Mr Chairman sir, Iam available and always should there arise a need for me to provide further explanation in person as regard my letter
Thank you very much for your attention.Yours in service to the Nation,
Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin, APC-Kano,Kiru-Bebeji Federal Constituency,Kano
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