Abdulmumin Jibrin Releases Documents on 2016 Budget Manipulation

Abdulmumin Jibrin, the immediate past chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation has made public more documents backing his claim of manipulation of the 2016 budget by his colleagues in the lower house.

The 39 year old Kano lawmaker has since his resignation as Appropriation chairman dragged House Speaker Yakubu Dogara on allegations of non performance and misappropriation.

Hon Jibrin has been on a collision course with the House leadership, accusing it of padding the 2016 budget with bogus projects.

In this latest set of documents, the Kano State-born politician, who said the fraud totaled billions of naira, shows how lawmakers applied for, or received approvals for the contentious constituency projects, Premium Times reports.

The documents further purport that deputy speaker Mr. Yusuf Lasun, who chaired the committee that approved the final House version of the budget, fraudulently earmarked funds for non-existent projects for different lawmakers by embedding them in genuine projects proposed by the executive for ministries, departments and agencies.

This development is expected to complicate the increasingly untenable position of Speaker Dogara, and indeed the leadership of the National Assembly, who were generally held culpable in the budget padding scandal and long-drawn battle between the executive and legislature.

It will be recalled that speaker Dogara had earlier in the week challenged Hon Jibrin to present a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) with evidence about his allegations.

See some of his tweets below

I have raised serious allegations of corruption against them and rather than raise corruption allegations against me /

— Abdulmumin Jibrin (@AbdulAbmJ) July 26, 2016

/ and defend themselves against the ones I raised, they are busy accusing me of immaturity and some lame and ambitious stories /

— Abdulmumin Jibrin (@AbdulAbmJ) July 26, 2016

I have called the 4 of them very corrupt public officers. I stand by my statement that they've grossly abused their offices and public trust

— Abdulmumin Jibrin (@AbdulAbmJ) July 26, 2016

To Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, Whip Alhassan Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor. They must answer these questions.

— Abdulmumin Jibrin (@AbdulAbmJ) July 26, 2016

Why did you take the decision to fraudulently shortchange the House by taken away 40 billion naira out of the 100 billion naira allocated/

— Abdulmumin Jibrin (@AbdulAbmJ) July 26, 2016