Group Urges Dogara to Resign As Speaker Of House Of Representatives

This was contained in a statement signed by the Executive Director, Niger Delta Budget Monitoring Group, Dr. George-Hill Anthony on Monday in Port Harcourt.

Recall that Hon. Addulmumin Jibrin, a lawmaker from Kano State and former House Committee chairman on Appropriation, had revealed that the speaker of the House of Representatives, HoRs, Hon Yakubu Dogara, colluded with his deputy, Yusuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Doguwa, and Minority Whip, Leo Ogor to allocate up to ₦40 billion to themselves in the 2016 National Assembly budget.

The group described the action as an “abuse of office and a betrayal of trust”, adding that Jibrin’s allegation should “not be swept under the carpet”.

The statement read, “We at the Niger Delta Budget Monitoring Group, NDEBUMOG, are worried over the shocking and scandalous revelations on Speaker Yakubu Dogara’s involvement in the padding of the 2016 budget. It is shameful that such attempt to defraud the country of a whooping N40b through the manipulation of the budget could be contemplated by elected officers under a government that has promised to crush corruption and at a period the government has been complaining of dwindling revenues. It is a gross abuse of office and a betrayal of trust.

“Although the lawmakers have denied the allegations, saying Mr. Jibrin was expressing the scorn he felt after being sacked as chairman of Committee on Appropriation, we are of the view that such revelations, which have eroded the morality and integrity of the entire House of Representatives, should not be swept under the carpet. It should be thoroughly probed, and if the officers mentioned in the alleged scam are found culpable, they should be made to face the full wraths of the law. This is the only way the House of Reps could regain its trust and integrity.

“We commend Addulmumin Jubrin for these revelations, although his attempt to draw public sympathy from the revelations came rather too late. There is no doubt that he would have continued to conceal the atrocity, if not that he fell out of the favour of the speaker and other principal officers of the House.

“Interestingly, reasons many Nigerians suspected over the years for the insistence of the National Assembly that the power to “appropriate or re-appropriate” on the National Budget is “theirs” have now been confirmed by the Jibrin’s revelations. They have argued always that they are appropriation lords; trying to bully and hack the Executive to allow them {the National Assembly Members} have their way at the detriment of millions of Nigerians just because they want to allocate public funds among themselves at will.

“It is not a secret that many Nigerians trust the Lower House (HoRs) more than the Senate. Unfortunately, such pro-poor trust is already at the risk of being lost, if majority of the members of the HoRs fail to come together immediately to remove all the principal officers mentioned in this messy affair. We wait to see how majority of the HoRs members, who are young Nigerians, would allow their “padded political loyalty” flush-away their political future. The integrity of the entire House of Representatives is at stake, if the officers in question are not removed immediately for a thorough investigation.

“Therefore, we demand that Speaker Yakubu Dogara and all the principal officers mentioned in the scandal should immediately resign, even if “collective interest” of the parliamentarians’, rallies around them in the opposite. Again, the scandal in question demands a thorough probe and the suspected accomplices cannot be the judges in their own case.

“Nigerians should note possible remedial actions of the Political Parties that the actors in question represent and reward the parties accordingly with their votes, if the Political Parties that the actors represent fail to take necessary remedial actions aimed at deterring such inglorious acts in future.”