Suspended Hon. Jibrin flies to court, says no apology

Hours after his 180-legislative-day suspension on Wednesday, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin has vowed to not apologise to anybody as recommended by the House etics committee that found him guilty of breaching House privileges.

“Let me say, I will never ever apologise to anybody in the House of Representatives. I did not commit any offence,” he said in a statement Wednesday night as he vowed to seek redress in court.

Jibrin has been scandalising principal officers of the House, including Speaker Yakubu Dogara, and 11 others he alleged padded N40 billion into the 2016 budget.

He made the allegations after he was relieved of his position as chairman of the House committee on appropriation in July.

On September 21, a day after resuming, Mr. Dogara’s loyalists moved a motion at the plenary seeking disciplinary actions against Mr. Jibrin.

The image of the House has never been worse than this before. Hon. Jibrin was reckless and the allegations were false. He knew that the allegations were false and scandalous and he had no regards at all to whether the allegations were true or false,” said Hon. Emmanuel Orker-Jev.

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The House then asked its Ethics and Privileges Committee for further investigation and to report back within a week with its findings and recommendations.

Nicholas Ossai, chairman of the committee, convened the first hearing on the matter September 23, during which Orker-Jev submitted his evidence against Jibrin.

Jibrin, however, ignored the committee, asking his lawyer Femi Falana to seek discontinuation of the committee’s activities because the mayyer was already in court.

The report of the committee was laid before the House plenary at noon on Wednesday, and by 2:30 p.m., the House voted to adopt the recommendations of the committee as read out by Mr. Ossai on the floor.

“At this point, I must say they freed me up to concentrate on the matter in court,” Jibrin said of the suspension.

“I’m going into a massive alliance with civil society groups, NGOs and well-meaning Nigerian to continue to press ahead.”