Former President Obasanjo has reacted to the mind boggling revelations made by former Chairman, House Committee on appropriation, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin implicating the Speaker of the House of Representatives who masterminded the padding of the 2016 budget by over N40 billion.
In his reaction the former President Obasanjo, said the developments validates his controversial comments about the National Assembly, calling it a den of rogues and armed robbers.
Obasanjo, who attended the Fourth annual conference of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies in Lagos, had said in 2012: “integrity is necessary for all systems and institutions to be strong. Today, rogues, armed robbers are in the state houses of assembly and the national assembly. What sort of laws will they make?”
Obasanjo, who spoke to news men on Monday shortly after he had an audience with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Aso Presidential Villa, Abuja, said that the institution stinks.
“Well, if you said that I have said it in the past and if they are people who didn’t believe what I said in the past then you now say that what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then you can say what I said in the past is what I will say now.
”It is not a question of investigation; we should get men and women of integrity in the place and the president should be very vigilant, whatever should not pass should not pass.”
Obasanjo said that he was in the Villa to deliver messages from Liberia, Gambia and Seychilles to President Buhari.
“I am visiting this time because I have some messages for the president. Not too long ago, I was in Liberia and Gambia and I have messages these two countries will want me to deliver to the president.
“Also, only yesterday I came back from Seychelles Island where I attended this year’s Annual General meeting of Africa Export Development Bank. And there are aspects of the proceedings that I think I should update the President.”
Obasanjo said that traveling to different countries has educated him more.
“Travelling is a good education, what you will learn about a country by visiting that country for two or three days you won’t learn by reading through books”, he said. Asked whether he intended to slow down, he said “May God not allow you to slow now.”
Hon. Abdumumin Jibrin (APC, Kano) who was hitherto the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation had, on Friday, opened a can of worms on the padding of the 2016 budget by the lawmakers, implicating the Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara in the padding controversy of over N40 billion. The exposure came on the heels of the announcement of his replacement on Thursday by the Speaker.
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