Budget 2016: House of Reps appropriations committee chair resigns

….I will open up soon on what transpired during the budget process – Jibrin

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has announced the removal of Abdulmumin Jibrin from Kano state as the House Committee Chairman on Appropriations.

Announcing the sack on Wednesday, Dogara said that the Chairman, House Committee on Housing, Rep. Mustapha Bala Dawaki also from Kano State and a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) would replace Rep. Jibrin as chairman of the appropriations committee.

Our correspondents recall that the sacked committee chairman had issues with his colleagues while holding sway as chairman of appropriations committee as he was accused of allegedly inserting constituency projects valued at over N4 billion in the 2016 budget.

This development led to the clamour for his removal by aggrieved lawmakers but Dogara who rewarded him with the plum chairmanship position because of the key role he played in his emergence as speaker was said to have protected him from the hawks seeking his removal.

According to Dogara, “he (Jibrin) came to me and said he cannot do it anymore and that the pressure was on him.”

But addressing reporters after plenary on Wednesday, Rep. Jibrin said his stepping aside as chairman of the appropriations committee was a personal decision he took after due consultations with his family members and denied that he was pressurized to resign by anyone.

While declaring that he bears no animosity towards anybody or the leadership of the House, he said that he did his best as chairman of the appropriations committee.

He added that if anyone had any misgivings about his tenure as committee chairman, he takes full responsibility, asserting further that in due course, he will soon open up on what transpired during the budget process.

According to him, “today, I walked into the chamber; I approached Mr. Speaker that after consulting with my family, I will not be available as chairman of appropriations committee”.

Rep. Jibrin said that he was leaving the committee post with an unblemished record, even though he said there were a lot of issues in the House pertaining to the 2016 budget that he will address in due course.

He said that he had tried to explain internally some of the controversies that surrounded the process of harmonising the 2016 budget and insisted that he committed no offense and as such was ready to stand any scrutiny by any agency of government.

“I wasn’t forced to resign, I resigned on my own volition. I am sure the Speaker himself was surprised but I told him, there is no going back. There is no how an individual can write the budget.

“It’s a process and a cycle and the records are there of inputs in the budget. Insinuations the appropriations committee wrote the budget for the National Assembly are untrue because inputs emanated from the various House committees”, the lawmaker stated.