By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

FOR the third time in three years Yakubu Dogara, former Speaker of the House of Representatives has tried to earn anti-corruption credentials. Each attempt ended up casting more mud on the character of the meek and mild Dogara who must be remembered for making everything about him.

When he left Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014, Dogara was finishing his second tenure in the House of Representatives. He then claimed he was on a mission for his people’s benefit.

Professor Itse Sagay, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, is outraged at Dogara’s tentative politics. “For me, this is a big setback for the image of APC. I think it’s an illustration of the fact that we are yet to adopt ideology and principles in our politics. Because if you have an ideology and philosophy, you won’t be hopping from one party to another,” he said of Dogara’s return to APC.

“It creates a negative image of Nigeria and our political parties as immature. Nobody   drove Dogara away from APC. He woke up one day and decided to follow his friend Bukola Saraki to PDP. Why didn’t he stay there? Why is he back to APC again? So, for him, there is no difference between the two parties. This whole idea of allowing people to jump in and out of parties has to stop.”

Dogara explained the 2014 departure from PDP as a search for better partnerships for his people in Bauchi. He was later to ride on the back of PDP legislators to become the Speaker in 2015 against the orders of APC leadership. He ran into early troubles.

Alhaji Abdulmumini Jubrin, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, also a former PDP legislator representing Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituency in Kano State, pelted Dogara with allegations of padding the 2016 budget with N280 billion, N40 billion of which, according to Jubrin, was for Dogara and the House leadership alone. Jubrin’s visits to the security agencies to submit petitions on the crimes in the House, the naming of those who should be removed from their positions did not result in any investigation.

Did Dogara distribute $20,000 to each of the House’s 360 members as Jubrin alleged? The $20,000 (N2.628 billion at the semi-official exchange rate then of N315 for 360 members) appears huge. Dogara’s aides denied the payment while Jubrin was ready to prove the payment.

Jubrin was suspended for six months from the House. None of the security agencies to which he presented the evidence investigated the padding of the 2016 budget. Rather, a 2012 EFCC investigation against Jubrin was resurrected. APC, contrary to its claims that saints populated it, has discovered that the men and women it congregated to effect change, were anxious to reap the fruits of their investments. It did not appear that they would be patient enough to profit legitimately from their efforts.

Dogara led members of the House of Representatives to their time to chop, only that the likes of Jubrin were eating too noisily that their complaints would not allow the food to digest.

Corruption is the buzzword that throws Nigerians into frenzy before a government that waves brooms around to sweep out corruption. It has largely admitted its failure by warning, before each move, that corruption would fight back. Is corruption fighting back or people are fighting to prove how corruptly innovative they are? Dogara has incoherent positions on corruption.

He hardly discussed the weighty allegations Jubrin made beyond threats of litigations. A serious crime was concealed because if fully investigated and punished, it could have taken down some personalities that governments and greed required for 2019. Was it for nothing that people did not refer to the massive mutilation, infestation, manipulation, and complication that were heaped on the 2016 budget as forgery or anything close to a crime?

Indeed, our leaders are schooled in malapropism; they live on it, cannot survive without it. Too many of them defended the manipulations of the 2016 budget as mere insertion of new projects, or padding, knowing that there were no laws that would punish padding, a word that sounds like some protective casing for the budget instead of the thievery it was.

Sagay had also said in 2017, “As for the leadership of the APC, I think they are the most unprincipled group of people. They are lily-livered, weak, and cannot run any organisation. They cannot control anybody. In fact, they’re now encouraging and accepting ‘rogue elephants’, pampering people who are destroying the party, saying ‘let’s not annoy them too much’, but they’re destroying the APC house.

I think the APC leadership is weak, is too compromising and is certainly a failure as far as I’m concerned”. APC in turn accused Sagay of lacking respect for the President who appointed him.

Dogara in 2018 left for PDP, accusing APC of not keeping its promises. It was uncertain whether the promises were to him or his people in Bauchi. His return to the House on PDP ticket resonated with his address to his supporters where he said a political platform was no longer important.

He has just departed PDP again because of absence of transparency in the PDP-led government of Bauchi State. Corruption matters to Dogara, maybe if it involves others. APC again is the platform for the completion of Dogara’s sainthood. Has APC kept the promises? What were the promises?

Dogara and his politics of self is possible in settings where such freedom of character is available to his class. Whether his moves are based on a 2023 presidential ambition or not, he makes the loud point that most of our politicians are thinking only about their future – they are so busy at it that our present does not matter.