The lawmaker, Abdulmumin Jibrin, is a polarising figure and a fiercely outspoken member of the House of Representatives. His legislative functions and media engagements, in the 7th and 8th National Assembly, have provoked, amused and impressed us differently.
I was one of those somewhat indifferent to his politics.
Perhaps because I didn’t bother to study his antecedents or even pay keen attention to his commentaries on the state of the nation since his emergence in the 7th National Assembly as Chairman, House Committee on Finance.
The first time I took peculiar interest in him was when the video of his Committee’s hostile session with the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Iweala, went viral. The second was during the budget fiasco, primarily because of his role as Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation. This exposed him to a streak of partisan attacks, especially from those who perceived him as saboteur and ambassador of his institution’s corruption.
His audacity to challenge the poplar Executive, knowing the voltage of criticism that awaited any perceived critic of the Buhari-led Cabinet, was a political gamble I was surprised he survived. It came with a cost, though. He became unpopular, discussed even at the grassroots, the incubator of ignorance and gullibility, as “an enemy of Nigeria.” That he was against Buhari!
Jibrin’s crime was being a member of an institution that attempted to discharge its constitutional duties, which weren’t in tandem with those of the Executive.
The conflict was based on the discrepancies detected in the needlessly delayed 2016 budget, and the back and forth that ensued as the heads of both institutions sought to present themselves to the people as the sincere, the victims.
The perception of Hon. Jibrin then was reminiscence of the travails of the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Malam Nuhu Ribadu. In the build up to, and at the end of, the 2011 elections, Ribadu’s popularity in the north waned amongst the gullible who took his political adventure as a presidential candidate and right as a citizen for a deliberate ploy to sabotage the ambition of Candidate Muhammadu Buhari.
Like Ribadu, Jibrin too is still seen by some of us in the north as a saboteur, a perception created by a systemic ignorance sustained by misunderstanding of Politics, Civics and of course our anti-intellectual leanings as a people who have upheld the personality cult that is Buharism.
During the budget fiasco, when discussing the discrepancies in the 2016 budget and apportioning blames were a national pastime, I was involved in a debate with a Tea Stall owner in my neighbourhood. I overhead him and his clientele analysing the budget and almost unanimously agreeing that Jibrin was against the Buhari government.
“How is a lawmaker who’s contesting a padded budget an enemy of the President?” I asked. One of them offered to explain, and his response was a tool for me to ridicule them.
The lawmaker, he said, owed the President uncritical allegiance as member of the President’s party, region and religion.
For over an hour, I engaged them on why an uncritically loyal National Assembly would be a disaster to Nigeria. And then I pointed out that the discrepancies being pointed out to Nigerians by Jibrin were not the intentions of Buhari. And that if the lawmakers were to be the affirmative robots of their wish, certain elements in our corrupt bureaucracy would exploit our political arrangements to swindle Nigeria.
But Jibrin became a Lone Ranger, going from one TV station to another, granting interviews to the general press, and using his social media platform to exonerate himself from complicity in the padding of the 2016 budget.
Like the Mai Shayi and his clientele I encountered, so many members of the supposedly educated or better informed demographics rejected his version of the Budget story.
And like many politicians afraid of falling down the bar of popularity, I followed Jibrin’s frustrated attempts to re-establish himself as a misunderstood politician and a supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari. Even though I considered his bids to reassure the people of his pro-Buhari credential needless, it’s easy to predict the implications of leaving such misunderstanding unaddressed.
For days, on Twitter, he shared his frustrations at the leadership of the National Assembly, advocating, in a series of tweets on June 27, monitoring of the activities of the National Assembly by anti-graft agencies, before expressing dissent to the intention of his colleagues to have immunity for members of the National Assembly.
His rebellion against leadership of the House of Representatives, which started as rumbles of discontents in series of tweets, day after day, was officially declared on July 21, announcing his resignation as Chairman of House Committee on Appropriation.
By declaring his war against the establishment, we’ve found a strong ally against the institution’s corrupt practices. Jibrin has charged at four principal members of the House – the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker, the Whip, and the Minority Leader – and accused them of re-allocating to themselves 40% of the N100 billion allocated to the entire National Assembly.
Perhaps the most controversial was the accusation of padding the budget, which was a process under Jibrin as Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation. Jibrin also accused the powerful quartet of having up to N20 billion decided for “wasteful projects” in their constituencies.
And that despite alerting the Speaker to 2000 new projects added to the budget by 10 Chairmen of House Committees unknown by other members of the committees, nothing was done. Instead, according to him, he was antagonised and frustrated.
Jibrin’s whistle blowing, no matter one’s perception of him, is a needed dispute to properly have a guide into the size of corruption going on at the Dogara-led House of Representatives. And as citizens, it’s our responsibility to cheer him up to spill the beans.
