Suspended member of the House of Representatives, Abdulmumini Jibrin on Friday supported claims by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, that the National Assembly stinks of corruption.
Abdulmumini also said that Speaker of the House Yakubu Dogara in collaboration with some private entities designed a model to divert allocation of the House to private use when he was Chairman House services committee in the 6th Assembly.
“He remained the custodian and supervisor of the scam as Chairman House services committee in the 6th Assemblyagain as chairman House services in the 7th Assembly and yet again wrath it up as Speaker in the 8th Assembly,” he said.
Abdulmumini insisted that each member of the House collect between N10million to N20 million as running cost on monthly basis.
Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Publicity Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, in his regular weekly briefing on Thursday stated that Obasanjo who has accused several Nigerian leaders of corruption would exonerate himself of any wrongful act.
Namdas who said it was un-becoming of a former President to quote figures of sums of money that are factually incorrect, noted that no member of the House of Representatives receives N10m every month as Obasanjo claimed.
But Abdulmumini in a statement yesterday buttressed Obasanjo’s claim. Adding that Namdas should have disclosed details of running costs accrued to members.
“I stand by my statement that each member collects about N10million monthly and between N10million to N20 million was collected in the past. Namdas would have made matter easy for the entire country and the anti corruption agencies by simply telling us how much each member earns including such random millions of naira that we are just asked to give account numbers and the next thing you see alerts! No body is saying the members do not need running cost for their offices, what we are saying is that the amount is diverted directly into private pockets,” he said.
Abdulmumini noted that members of the House and indeed Nigerians were not in the dark about the institutional corruption in the legislative arm of government.
The suspended legislator had alleged that leadership of the House manipulated the 2016 budget, noted that leadership of the House seem not to realise that Nigerians are fully aware of the monumental budget fraud and corruption in the green chambers.
“I wish to state categorically clear as a cognate member with a deep inside knowledge of the House having served as Chairman finance and Later Appropriation committee simultaneously that all what former president Obasanjo said is true. It amazes me that only Speaker Dogara and his cohorts like Namdas seems not to realize that Nigerians are fully aware of the monumental budget fraud and corruption in the House.,” he said.
Reacting to claims that the National Assembly was underfunded, Abdulmumini said Namdas lacked the knowledge to speak on the topic, noting that the Spokesperson of the House knew nothing about allocation to the House.
”Namdas lacked the institutional knowledge to comment on issues like this. What does he know about allocations to the House? Statutory allocations to NASS rose from about N40 billion in 2006 to N150 billion in 2011 and 120biliion in 2015 then N115 billion in 2016. The problem is not that the money is insufficient to run the entire activities of NASS and even more but the truth of the matter is that about half the money is stolen in the name of running cost,” he said.
IRECTLY into private pockets through the fraud called running cost. I have received briefing from my lawyers in London that such scams equals a crime against humanity and there are laws in America and Europe that allows the FBI and INTERPOL to deal with such cases at the international level so that the culprits who created the scam can be prosecuted.”
He stated further that: “Even after stealing about half the allocation, the spending of the remaining balance is done in secrecy. No member have access to copies of the internal budget of the House to see how the remaining money is spent after deducting the fraudulent running cost. How much is being spent on the institutions like NILS and NABRO? And how much is paid as salaries to general staff? How much is paid to legislative aides most of who are ghost staff? Yes ghost staff! How much is spent on public hearings?
Namdas should release the figures if he wants to be taken serious. Even the construction of permanent site of NILS which should be from NASS allocation only is part funded under capital supplementation in the service wide vote! As Chairman Finance, I have had instances where I gave money to NABRO from my pocket because they are so badly funded. What nonsense is Namdas talking about? The House should be ashamed of itself that it knows details of budget of the executive arm including wage bill but it cannot simply let the world know the details of its own budget. What a fraud! What a shame!! Yet you have the guts to address the press and throw abuses!
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