By Tony Iredia
The House of Representatives last Wednesday suspended its former Appropriations Committee Chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin for 180 legislative days. He was also barred from holding any position of responsibility in the House for the rest of the eighth National Assembly in addition to being directed to tender a written apology to the House.

This followed the adoption of the report of the committee on Ethics and Privileges which investigated allegations of breach of privileges of the House and its members.

Abdumumin Jibrin

The Chairman of the Ethics Committee, Nicolas Ossai, who presented the committee’s findings and recommendations, said the Committee found all the allegations against Jibrin to be true. He also said all efforts to get the accused to appear before the committee proved abortive. There is not much to take away from all that was said. Indeed, the finding of guilt was expected because it is not in the character of our legislators to find anyone who raises any allegation against them to be innocent.

In 2003, the former Director General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) Nasir el Rufai who is now Kaduna state Governor was nominated to be a Minister in the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. During the senate clearance exercise, El Rufai raised an alarm that some specific senators demanded millions of naira from him so as to make his clearance easy. The senate then went ahead to investigate the matter and cleared its affected members while declaring el rufai’s allegation as false.

This notwithstanding, the “liar” nominee was cleared which suggests that neither the nation nor the senators themselves believed the version of the senate. In other words, the cover-up pattern of probes in our legislature is not a secret and it hardly changes from its self preservation posture.

Also in 2003, our federal legislators sought to amend the Act setting up the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) because the Commission under Justice Mustapha Akanbi was at the time investigating charges of corruption against their leadership. The law was not only amended in haste, the legislature did not have a quorum to so act. It even sought to extend the constitutional provision on immunity to itself but called for public hearing after it had concluded action on the subject.

In 2012, the polity was heated up by a public assertion by the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs that civil service jobs in Nigeria go to those who can bribe their way through.  Some 3 federal bodies:  the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corp, the Federal Roads Safety Commission and the Nigeria Customs Service were described as foremost culprits.

Whereas the plan by the senate to probe the subject would ordinarily make sense, many Nigerians were not in support first because of the convoluted nature of probes by our legislators and second because majority of the alleged back-door recruitments were foisted on the organizations through legislative over sight functions. We cannot blame the public for its apparent loss of faith.

Apart from the famous power probe and that on fuel subsidy in which members of the probe panels were later accused of corruption in the course of their probes, there was the classical case of Aruma Oteh, a former Director General of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who told the nation that the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market demanded N44 million from her.

She said the then Chairman of the Committee in personally, made a number of illegal monetary demands as well a business class ticket to travel to the Dominican Republic for a conference, but that he neither made the trip nor returned the money.

The House brushed aside all these weighty allegations and began to examine certain perceived deficiencies in the competence and conditions of service etc of the lady and thereafter, passed a resolution that former President Jonathan should sack her because she allegedly was unqualified.

The refusal of the President to meet the demand angered the sister body; the senate to back the House making it appear that our National Assembly as a whole also functions as a trade union. Even when the issue at stake is the handiwork of a few of its own members who attempt to wash their dirty linen in public, the self preservation posture is also maintained.

When for instance former Representative Dino Maleye now a Senator led some legislators to draw attention to some impropriety in the House under Speaker Dimeji Bankole, they were promptly suspended. As always the substance of the allegation was swept under the carpet. Now that Jibrin has done what Melaye did before, will it be uncharitable for anyone to see his suspension as a façade?

Again, what does former President Obasanjo in his 8 unbroken years of interaction with the law making body know of the typical legislator about which the rest of us require public enlightenment? Speaking with state house media correspondents earlier in the year Obasanjo reiterated the need to ensure that only men and women of integrity found their way to the legislature while the president must be vigilant over what the lawmakers pass to him as a budget.

When specifically asked if he would support an investigation into the affairs of the legislature over the alleged padding of the 2016 budget, the former president said: “ýit’s not 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.”

In her days in office, Aruma Oteh while being probed by the House of Representatives made the following notable statement: “when I took this job, I was warned that when you fight corruption, it will fight back but I did not know that the fight would come from the House Committee on Capital Market.”  Is Representative Jibrin under the same dilemma now?

Well, our interest is not whether Jibrin is guilty or not of the abuse of House privileges. We are also not concerned about the fairness or otherwise of his trial. Rather, what the nation deserves to be told is; now that Jibrin has been suspended, what happens to his allegation that the Speaker conspired with other principal officers of the House sto divert N40 billion out of N100 billion meant for constituency projects?