TheCable

Jibrin Abdulmumin, former chairman of the house of representatives appropriation committee, says the comment of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo about lawmakers being corrupt is not “completely wrong”.

Some members of the national assembly had reacted angrily to Obasanjo’s statement, but speaking during an interview with Channels TV on Sunday, Jibrin said his colleagues enjoy living in denial.

He said the corruption in the house is “institutional.”

“There is corruption in the house of representatives, there is institutional corruption among other things. I can prove, and this is a second layer of what my struggle is going to be about, ” Jibrin said.

“Obasanjo is not completely wrong, there is corruption, the only problem is that we keep living in denial but I have been part of that system and I know there is corruption in that system.

“There is also institutional corruption in that system, I have been in that institution for five years, we have seen a lot.”

He said though the constitution empowers the legislature to appropriate funds for projects, the insertions in the 2016 budget were “senseless”.

The lawmaker alleged that on several occasions, Yakubu Dogara, the speaker, requested him to insert projects into the budget.

“It is very important that the constitution gave us the power to appropriate, insert, but the intention of the constitution is not to do senseless insertions, ” he added.

“We did a statistics after collecting reports from the various committees, shockingly I discovered that about 10 standing committees of the house, posted about 2,000 projects totalling about N200 billion.”

Jibrin is accusing Dogara and 11 others of “padding” the 2016 budget through “unnecessary” projects.