THE  suspension of Abdulmumin Jibrin by the House of Representatives was predictable.  When he was dismissed by the Speaker, Dr. Yakubu Dogara, as the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, it appeared like poor judgment on the Speaker’s part.  The Speaker had admitted Jibrin voluntarily offered to resign.  Why dramatize the dismissal of a colleague who offered to go on his own?
When Jibrin accused the Speaker and three members of the House Leadership and called for their resignation, a public response was required to remove any shadow of doubt.  Indeed, a point by point explanation was called for to demonstrate that Jibrin was wrong.  But the House Leadership has such a low opinion of the Nigerian public it could not be bothered to reply, much less explain its part of the argument with Jibrin.
The resort to regular corruption infrastructure like rented crowds, procured protests by the House Leadership added to public anxiety that Jibrin might just be right.  Attempts to defend the House Leadership by House members or their proxies tended to sound arrogant, condescending, and autocratic.  Indeed, the common refrain that runs through such defences is that there is nothing anyone can do about us.  “We can’t do any wrong. We are democracy.  Without us there is no democracy.”  These sentiments crept into the Speaker’s arguments.  Intimations of infallibility.  Padding is not an offence, he stated, which sounded like Richard Nixon’s “when it’s done by the President it is not illegal.”
The Speaker led the House to follow the path of least resistance when it assigned its well-known disreputable Ethics and Privileges Committee the Jibrin case.  A committee worth its name would not hold a single sitting, take evidence from one witness and summarily suspend a member for a year without the slightest effort at getting at the truth.  It not only made the committee appear unserious it also portrays it as a group with a pre-meditated intention using the committee as a vehicle to actualize its original objective.
It reminds Nigerians of the 2003 Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions chaired by Olorunnimbe Mamora which looked into the allegations of Malam Nasir el-Rufai that two senators, Ibrahim Mantu and Silas Zwingina, asked him  for a bribe of N54 million to confirm his appointment as minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The similarity of the two cases is uncanny.  As in el-Rufai’s case, all hell has been let loose not on the accused persons who might have criminally inserted huge sums into the 2016 budget, but on the accuser, who has braved all fears of fate or fortune or career to take on the powers that be in the House, the way el-Rufai took on those in the Senate.
Jibrin seems determined to contribute to the cleansing of the House while his adversaries are determined to embarrass him apparently to silence all those who might in future try to emulate him.
As it was in El-Rufai’s case, the House Ethics Committee has used a technicality to suspend Jibrin.  Worse, the country seems to be keeping quiet just as it did in 2003 and let the accused get away.  And what is worse in the present circumstance is that in 2003, the Mamora Committee white-washed the issue and exonerated their colleagues.  In Dr. David A. Ihenacho’s caustic review of the committee’s report, he noted that “… the committee concluded its farcial hearing with empty statements that absolved their colleagues of any impropriety…the committee forgot its name as an Ethics committee not a law court.  As a committee on ethics, its role was not to indulge in unnecessary legalese.  Its duty is to probe the motive, the possibility of such a thing happening, the appearance that such might have happened, the history of such happening in the senate, the circumstances that could have enabled such a thing happening…This is the traditional nature of ethics investigation that deals with he said and they said.
The corrupt senate committee on ethics had no transparent way to match el-Rufai’s words against those of the accused…”  You can substitute Jibrin for el-Rufai and the critique would be quite apt.
To be able to convict Jibrin, justice demanded that the House ethics committee would have found his accusations to be purely unfounded.  In other words, the House leadership would have been proven to have had no motive to pad the budget, and there was no possibility of budget padding happening in the House, and no history of such a deed.
We must stand with Jubrin because he seems motivated more by the need for reform that for revenge.  He knows that the House is ripping the country off unjustly and thereby alienating itself from the people.  He spoke against the running costs because he said it is part of the corruption confronting the institution.  On the issue of the problematic allowances of members, he observed that “the way the allowances of members are currently structured cannot pass the integrity test…  The issue of allowances of members of the House is another systemic corruption.  Since you cannot afford the system shock if you go all out and arrest 200 to 300 members at once, what you do is deal with the issues in phases.”
He gave a breakdown of how the so-called “running costs” have been shared: Speaker Dogara, N1.5 billion; Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lanus, N800 million; Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, N1.2 billion; his deputy, Buba Jibril, N1.2 billion; House Whip, Alhassan Doguwa, N1.2 billion; his deputy Pally Iriase, N700 million; Minority Leader PDP’s Leo Ogar, N1.2 billion; Minority Whip, Yakubu Barde, N700 million; Deputy Minority Whip Binta Bello N700 million.
Jibrin said he was not waging a war just for the removal of Dogara but partly to close the questionable office running costs sink hole which he described as “the sole unifying force for the 360-member House.  Most of the members use it to acquire properties, cars, and live a life of luxury they have never lived before coming to the House,” he said.
“It is only when the legislature comes with purity that effective oversight will be carried out and investigative hearings to expose fraud and corruption can be undertaken.  The consequential effect of dealing with corruption in the House, especially the allowance issue (members collect 17 different allowances in addition to their huge salaries) will take its toll on even elections.  Candidates usually spend so much money hoping that they can recoup from the huge allowances they will receive when elected into House.” “When you know there is no such money in the House to be shared, I’m sure nobody will want to put in so much money to win an election to the House.  The resultant effect will be that only people who truly want to serve will vie for the office and voters will be obliged to vote according to the dictates of their conscience.  This is just one advantage,” Jibrin said.

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To be concluded.