As corruption tears National    Assembly apart

The current corruption scandal regarding padding of the 2016 budget by principal officers of the House of Representatives appears to have confirmed a belief that Nigeria’s lawmakers are not serving the interest of the masses. Fisayo Falodi writes

The last few weeks have been quite tough for the eighth National Assembly. The unfolding budget padding scandal rocking the House of Representatives has torn the lower legislative chamber apart. It has also brought to the fore the fear expressed by some Nigerians that the 2016 budget of change might not impact their lives like previous budgets.

The scandal, in the opinion of watchers of political events in the country, has given fillip to a consistent claim by some concerned Nigerians, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, that members of the National Assembly are corrupt and are not serving the interest of the masses.

In what appears to have become a tradition and habitual practice in the polity, the senator representing Osun East Senatorial District, Babajide Omoworare, had admitted that lawmakers usually padded budgets to suit their interests.

“Budgets usually come to lawmakers padded and legislators further pad the appropriation bill in continuation of the corrupt practice,” Omoworare had said.

So, the revelations trailing the scandal had indicated that President Muhammadu Buhari, whose odium for corruption knows no bound, on May 6, 2016, signed a budget padded with bogus figures for selfish reasons by the lawmakers.

The President’s assent to the budget did not take place until after over five months delay, claims and counter-claims by both the legislature and the executive arms which accused each other of doctoring the document.

Shortly after signing the ‘budget of change’, Buhari had sought the cooperation of the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and other members of the National Assembly for its implementation.

He added that the budget was intended to signpost a renewal of his administration’s commitment to restoring serious faith with the Nigerian people.

Leader of the House of Representatives, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, and the senator representing Sokoto North, Aliyu Wammako,  had described the budget as the best in Nigeria’s recent history. They said it was historic because it was the first time in recent history that 30 per cent of the budget was devoted to capital expenditure.

But when the House of Representatives Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, recently announced the sacking of Mr. Abdulmumin Jibrin as the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation for single-handedly smuggling fictitious items into the budget and inflated it with as much as N40bn, little did Nigerians know that the  lawmakers they elected  to support Buhari’s efforts to achieve the budget’s objectives actually had a different and clandestine motive.

In a manner said to be highly embarrassing, the two principal dramatis personae in the budget scandal – Dogara and Jibrin – shockingly exposed each other’s roles in the despicable act.

A statement by the House spokesperson, Abdulrazak Namdas, who is one of Dogara’s supporters, detailed Jibrin’s sins. The statement accused the former appropriate committee chairman of incompetence, abuse of budgetary process and serial betrayal, including proclivity to blackmail.

The House alleged that Jibrin inserted funds for the Muhammadu Buhari Film Village in his constituency in Kano without the consent or solicitation of the President.

The House had said, “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.

“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.

“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.

“For reasons that were not noble and not in the public interest, Jibrin had initially inflated the budget by adding about N250bn more to the total figure as submitted by Mr. President. This the National Assembly leadership rejected as a form of financial recklessness and inability to appreciate the dwindling resources available to the government.”

But Jibrin had dismissed the allegations. He explained how N264bn constituency projects were said to have been smuggled into the budget. He alleged that 10 standing committees inserted the projects into the budget without the knowledge of their members.

Jibrin equally accused Dogara of diverting the Federal Government’s water project to his personal farm and secretly persuaded him (Jibrin) to insert N20bn into the budget through Service Wide Vote.

Unlike Namdas who did not provide documentary evidence to back the House allegations against Jibrin, the former appropriation chairman released some documents about the scandal and the role each suspected individual, especially other principal officers of the House, played in the scam.

Jibrin also named the Deputy Speaker, Mr. Yussuff Lasun; the Chief Whip, Mr. Alhassan Ado-Doguwa and the Minority Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, as accomplices in the budget padding.

He therefore wants the anti-corruption agencies and the Department of State Services to probe Dogara and his suspected accomplices. Jibrin also vowed to fully cooperate with investigators to understand the depth of the budget fraud.

Meanwhile, some public affairs analysts perceived the drama in the House of Representatives as a potential threat to Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign. They added that the lawmakers’ activities would negatively impact the implementation of the budget.

They backed the call by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project and some eminent lawyers on Dogara and other principal officers of the House alleged to have compromised the integrity of the 2016 budget to step aside for proper investigation into the allegations.

The Board Chairman, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi, who agreed that the legislative and executive arms in Nigeria had been caught in the web of budget padding over the years, condemned the act as unethical.

Umeagbalasi recalled that the last time Nigeria recorded credible budget with over N47bn surplus was in 1997. He echoed Omoworare’s assertion that both the legislature and the executive had questions to answer on the budget padding.

He asked the police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission and the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation to educate Nigerians and members of the international community as whether the act of budget padding is a crime in the Nigeria’s criminal justice system or known to its criminal laws.

Umeagbalasi said, “It is only when the answers are popularly given with yes voice that the act can now be taken as a crime. If the answers from the authorities concerned indicate that budget padding is a crime in Nigeria with clearly written and defined code sanctions in written law, then, let heads roll and feathers be ruffled.

“There should be no sacred cows and selective justice.  That is to say that there should be a comprehensive investigation, covering both executive and legislative arms, including their principal officers.

“A call from some social quarters for the resignation of the perceived culprits and accomplices should also not be restricted to few, leaving others. It should be holistic and total. That is to say that such call should be extended to the principal officers of the executive and legislative arms.”

Umeagbalasi mentioned members of the executive that should be investigated for allegedly aiding the padding to include the President, the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Minister of Finance and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

The National Conscience Party presidential candidate in the last general elections, Chief Martin Onovo, urged thorough investigation into the scandal before sanctioning Dogara and Jibrin.

He said because Dogara was democratically elected as the Speaker by his colleagues, it would be wrong to ask him to resign, especially when the allegation raised against him had yet to be proven.

“Dogara should not resign, but should be investigated and if indicted, then he should resign and face trial,” Onovo said.

According to him, budgeting process starts and end with the executive. So, the executive arm, which takes the final decision on the budget passed by the legislature, is a major culprit in the scam.

Onovo said, “So, if you know the process very well, it (the budget) starts and ends with the executive. Therefore, if there is any padding, the executive should be responsible because that arm of the government has the power to review, delete and insert. But that power is not absolute because the President also has the right to withhold his signature and say ‘I don’t agree with what is deleted or inserted.’

“Ultimately, it is irresponsible and inappropriate to hold the National Assembly responsible for budget padding or any error in the budgeting process. The budget originates from the executive, ends with the executive both with approval and implementation.”

He said since Jibrin had confessed that he significantly played a role in the saga, the former chairman of the appropriation committee should be sanctioned according to the law of the House.

Onovo said, “When you are sued and you admit guilt, you don’t need to be put to trial anymore. Jibrin has confessed. Therefore, the National Assembly should take appropriate punishment against him and if there is any criminal dimension to the issue, the police should be invited to prosecute him.

“For Dogara who has claimed innocence, he too should be investigated. But in my own opinion, there is no prima facie case against anybody in the National Assembly because constituency project is not illegal. The purpose of governance is to serve the constituencies.”

He, however, expressed fear that investigation into the budget padding allegation might not see the light of the day.

“It is just a waste of national resources on an investigation that cannot contribute anything to national development,” Onovo said.

The Executive Chairman, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran, was concerned that the padding was not detected despite the fact every member of the National Assembly saw the final copy of the budget before it was sent for the President’s assent.

Adeniran said if anybody should resign, the whole members of the National Assembly should be culpable because after the budget came from the committee, there was a plenary where everybody looked at the final copy before it was sent for the President’s assent.

He said, “If somebody padded the budget up to N40bn, what were the other members of the House looking before the budget got to the Presidency? But if it is proved that the padding is an act of corruption, Dogara and Jibrin should face trial.”

President Buhari had promised that the 2017 budget process would be devoid of the dispute that affected the passage of the 2016 document.

He had assured that the process of the next budget would begin earlier to ensure impactful implementation.

For the President to get the next year’s budget ready on time without any rancor, Adeniran suggested that all the National Assembly members should engage in the needs assessment of their constituencies before they make inputs into the budget.

He said, “It is not the executive that is supposed to carry out the needs assessment, it is the individual lawmaker. The lawmakers should go back to their constituencies to ask the people there what they want.

“The outcome of this is what the lawmakers will present to the executive for implementation.”