Maliki Salaudeen
To say that President Muhammadu Buhari came to power on the wings of
his anti-corruption credentials is simply stating the obvious. And that the All
Progressive Congress (APC) party swept majority of the governorship seats on
account of the change mantra of the party is equally not contestable. What is
however a subject of contention is whether some of the party’s governors are
still on the same page with the president in his avowed determination to clean
the nation’s Augean stable.
* Jibrila Mohammadu Bindow
Today, in Adamawa
State , a cruel drama of
sorts is currently playing out, which if not urgently nipped in the bud, has
all the potentials of negating President Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade. What
makes the entire scenario alarmingly worrisome is the fact that the state is
being governed by an APC governor, Sen. Bindow Umar Jibrila.
Allegations are rife in the state that the governor is currently
pilfering the resources of the state with abominable perfidy under the guise of
executing sundry projects, a development Abdurrahman Abubakar Isa, a
member representing Mubi South constituency in the State House of Assembly, has
been vehemently kicking against, which in turn has drawn the ire of the
governor. For his insistence that things be done in a proper manner in line
with the twin principles of transparency and accountability, Abubakar Isa is
today being barbecued on a smoldering fire of victimization.
The genesis of the current face-off between the governor and Isa
stemmed from the former’s submission of a document dated 28th October, 2015 to
the State House of Assembly titled ‘’Re-Submission of Detail Areas of Virement
in the 2015 Revised Budget’’, which in reality was a request for new capital
projects and not projects already contained in the earlier Appropriation Law.
This did not go down well with Isa, who happened to be the Chairman of the
House Committee on Finance, Budget and Appropriation, as he rightly insisted
that ‘’the only way new projects can be captured in the budget after passage of
the Appropriation Law is by a supplementary appropriation bill duly
passed by the House’’.