Who

Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives; Yusuf Lasun, Deputy Speaker; Abdulmumini Jibrin, MP (All belong to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

What & When

Dogara sacked budget committee chairman Jibrin on 20th July 2016. Many MPs had reportedly pressured the speaker to remove Jibrin alleging that Jibrin inappropriately assigned projects worth US$13 million to his constituency.

The money was part of US$340 million set aside for the MPs in the 2016 budget. They were expected to split the money among themselves and spend it on projects in their constituencies.

Why

Yesterday after he was removed as the committee chair, Jibrin implied that he was removed because he opposed a bill to amend section 308 of the constitution which seeks to confer immunity on the senate president and his/her deputy, the federal house speaker and his/her deputy, and the speakers of state parliaments and their deputies. The bill was sponsored by Leo Ogor (PDP) who is currently minority leader in the House. Apparently, Jibrin had also become unpopular because he refused to let Dogara, deputy speaker Lasun and two other House leaders take the lion's share of the constituency project money.

Jibrin said, "These members of the body of principal officers were not comfortable with my independent disposition and my refusal to cover up their unilateral decision to allocate to themselves about USD130 million of the USD330 million allocated to the entire National Assembly."1

Outlook

APC MP Mustapha Dawaki has replaced Jibrin as the committee chair, but this controversy further demonstrates the cracks within the APC which holds the majority in parliament. The issue will blow off soon, but the division within the party will affect the MPs' ability to act collectively and will impede the passage of politically sensitive bills (such as the immunity bill) in the short- medium term.

The rebellious APC faction is outnumbered by the loyalist faction, and so the rebellious faction won't likely be able to band with opposition MPs to push bills through. The immunity bill for instance is opposed by the APC loyalists who are more than a third of both chambers of parliament. So the bill will likely be shot down in parliament given the fact that its proponents basically need a two-thirds majority vote to even get it to the president's table.

Footnote

1. punchng.com/dogara-demanded-n40bn-padding-budget-says-jibrin/

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