The House of Representatives on Tuesday, 20 September held a peaceful session against expectation of a possible clash between those supporting Abdulmumin Jibrin’s call for Speaker Yakubu Dogara’s impeachment and those in favour of the speaker.
But Jibrin later told journalists that the speaker begged desperately that senior members should forgive his sins over the budget padding scandal.
Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Abdulmumin Jibrin
Jibrin said the speaker met with and begged the north east caucus of the lower chamber for forgiveness.
The Cable reports that the former chairman of the appropriation committee of House said:“When a grievous allegation in this nature is raised, there are laid-down rules to investigate such issue; it should not be investigated internally,” he said.
“The speaker should step down for proper investigation. Nobody is hunting him, but he should step down for a committee to do its work and investigate the issue.
“The speaker begged us that we should forgive him. He also begged for the principal officers. He said that the House should forget what happened in the 2016 budget.
“But Hon Sani Zoro told the speaker that the house will forgive him, but we have to accompany him to beg Nigerians.
“When he was begging, you could see the desperation on his face that he does not want to leave the seat. He loves the position of speaker so much.
Jibrin had ealier laughed off alleged plan to sanction him
“My question to him is; did he connive with the principal officers to steal the N40 billion?
“There are so many frauds in the budget that I did not even know until now. The speaker took four projects to his farm, including a fielder road.”
Though he agreed he was taking a risk by opening alleged hidden secrets of the House, he said he was not scared of being suspended.
In reaction, however, the spokesperson of the House, Abdulrazak Namdas, confirmed that Dogara actually met with leaders of the various caucuses of the House but that the meeting was to look into the economic recession plaguing Nigeria.
“The speaker decided to meet with leaders of all caucuses to discuss the way forward on the current recession and the way forward when the house resumes.
“The allegation the the speaker begged for forgiveness and members of northwest caucus passed a vote of no confidence on the chief whip Ado-Doguwa is not in anyway true. That the meeting was done in bad light is not true as well.
“Abdulmumin has made this allegations before, he has not said anything new. For him to allege that the car are meant to bribe members is not true. He has raised issue, so he should allow those people in charge do their job,” he said.
The report said some of the lawmakers who confirmed Namdas’ position revealed that out of the 24 members from Kano, 21 were backingSpeaker Yakubu Dogara while the north-east caucus of the House has passed a 100 per cent vote of confidence on the speaker.
Source: naij
