• Senate declines comment
• Reps ‘ll expose reasons for Jibrin’s sack today –Spokesman

From Fred Itua, Kemi Yesufu and Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

BUHARI oBJ

President Olusegun Obasanjo said recent events in the National Assembly have confirmed his earlier stance that the National Assembly is an assemblage of looters and thieves.
He was  reacting to the current budget padding accusation and counter-accusation between the leadership of the House of Representatives and sacked Chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriation Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin.
Jibrin alleged that the padding of the 2016 budget by N40 billion was done at a secret location with the backing of Yakubu Dogara and three principal officers including Deputy Speaker Yusuff Lasun, House Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor.
At the Red Chamber, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his deputy are facing a two-count charge. They are accused of forging Senate Rules in 2015.
Obasanjo who said he was in the Presidential Villa to deliver an important message from Liberia, the Gambia and Seychelles Island when asked to comment on the recent happenings in the National Assembly, which buttressed one of his statements in the past that the National Assembly was a cesspool of corruption, replied: “Well, if you said that I have said it in the past and if there are people who didn’t believe what I said in the past and then you now say that what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then I can say what I said in the past is what I will say now.”
On the call for investigation into the issue of padding of the budget, the former president said: “It’s not a question of investigation, we should get men and women of integrity in the place and the president should be very vigilant, whatever should not pass should not pass.”
The former president had in 2012 at the fourth annual conference of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies, lashed out at the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly describing them as institutions filled with “rogues and armed robbers.”
He had described them as the leading institution amongst the nation’s most corrupt and inefficient.
“Integrity is necessary for all systems and institutions to be strong. Today, rogues, armed robbers are in the state Houses of Assembly and the National Assembly. What sort of laws will they make?” he had asked.
In November 2014, Obasanjo, at the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, said apart from shrouding the remunerations of the National Assembly in opaqueness and without transparency, the lawmakers indulged in extorting money from departments, contractors and ministries in two ways.
“They do so during visits to their projects and programmes and in the process of budget approval when they build up budgets for ministries and departments, who agree to give it back to them in contracts that they do not execute. They do similar things during their inquiries.”
Last January, Obasanjo listed corruption  in the National Assembly to include “what they call constituency projects which they give to their agents to execute but invariably, full payment is made with little or no job done”.
The former president insisted that over the years, the National Assembly never singled out any corrupt lawmaker except where the executive led in the indictment of a member.
The senate yesterday failed to react to Obasanjo’s allegations.
Senate spokesman,  Abdullahi Sabi, said lawmakers were on break and could therefore not comment on Obasanjo’s claims.
“I have not heard what he (Obasanjo) has said. The Senate is on recess and I cannot make any comments on that issue. We are not even aware of what is being said. It is only when we are aware that we can make comments. The Senate is not aware, because we are on recess.”
Other Senators contacted declined to make comments, but rather, referred our correspondent to the Senate spokesman. They said since the issue raised was about the entire National Assembly, they were not in any position to make comments
Meanwhile, the senate has faulted Jibrin for going public with his allegations instead of exploring the internal mechanism of the National Assembly.
Addressing Senate correspondents yesterday in Abuja, Senate Leader, Ali Ndume wondered why the sacked chairman did not explore other options rather than resort to the media to blackmail the entire National Assembly.
“I do not want to say that there was budget padding and I do not want to talk about something I really do not know, but what is happening in the House of Representatives is just very unfortunate because we have processes and procedures of doing things in the National Assembly.
“If somebody has an issue, he knows what to do. It is not supposed to be the press that is supposed to be where somebody would carry his grievances, but I think they are going to work on it.
“I have been trying to reach out to both sides and we are working on that. There is nothing like budget padding. If it is the National Assembly that works on the budget, then you do not call it padding because padding is like illegality.
“There maybe certain abnormalities in the budget and what transpired in the budget process which is now an Appropriation Act. I think they know the right thing. We have a committee. If Abdumunin Jibrin is aggrieved, he writes a petition or whatever and that should be referred to Ethics and Privileges who can do investigation.”
However, Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Media, Abdulrazak Namdas  said  the House would be exonerated by the time it “fully exposes the real reasons” Jibrin was removed as appropriation committee chairman.
The House spokesman who was responding to inquiries on the statement issued by Jibrin on Sunday night in which he levelled a new set of allegations against the House leadership, said the House had a proper response to issues raised by the ex-chairman, contrary to Jibrin’s claims that it had none.
“I will be addressing a press conference on Tuesday in Abuja where I will completely lay bare the reasons the House had to remove the former chairman, for the whole world to see,” he told Daily Sun.