….. Recovers N30.33Bn
By Segun Fatuase
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has recovered N30.33 billion from infractions and returned over 176 contractors to the site during its latest Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Exercise.
The anti-graft commission is worried that Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPs), popularly called Constituency Projects in Nigeria, are still fraught with corruption as cases of budget duplication and passing off as satisfactorily completed projects for work not done by government agencies remain a serious challenge.
ICPC disclosed this while reviewing its report on its Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Exercise Phase VI during an anti-corruption radio program, PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development, PRIMORG, on Wednesday in Abuja.
ICPC’s Deputy Director of Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative (CEPTI), Jimoh Sulahiman, shedding light on the outcome of the latest tracking of government-funded projects, revealed that more projects were executed in the last tracking exercise, signaling an improvement from the past.
Sulahiman, however, identified budget duplication, government agencies asking supervisors who do not have the necessary experience to certify projects before paying contractors, and domiciling capital projects in agencies that cannot see to their execution as some of the significant drawbacks of constituency projects.
“For phase 6 of our tracking exercise, we tracked 1,721 projects across 26 states of the federation. We recovered over N30.33bn as cumulative savings to the government from infractions and abandoned projects, amongst others. We also returned 176 contractors to the site.
“ICPC’s focus is on those projects that impact the citizenry – health, education, water resources, agriculture, power, road infrastructure, and empowerment, and in the next few weeks, we’ll go back to phase 7, where we’ll cover 23 states. We are always strategic where we are going.”
Speaking on the challenges of ZIPs, Sulahiman revealed that infractions and lack of needs assessment by lawmakers who nominate constituency projects must be dealt with for Nigerians to start reaping the full benefit of the intervention initiative.
“A major challenge is government agencies compelling project supervisors to supervise projects they do not know of. Like a project supervisor who doesn’t know a lot about computers but is sent to supervise the supplies of computers without knowing the measurement of specifications required.
“Also, the issue of domiciling projects in an MDA that doesn’t have the capacity or skill set to execute such projects is a problem. And this happens with almost every project we are tracking. They now get consultants to do what other MDAs who have the right skill sets should have done for less cost.
“With regards to the members of the National Assembly who are usually facilitators of constituency projects, we have been engaging them to do their needs assessment. Also, if they want to facilitate a project that requires the input of the state or local government, they should get their buy-in first because they are the ones that will help sustain it,” He stated.
On ICPC’s effort to combat budget padding and duplication of projects, Sulahiman gave these explanations: “We (ICPC) check the budget every year, item by item, we see projects that are loaded to Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that they don’t have the capacity for and tag them ‘Out of Mandate’ projects meaning that those projects may not be executed well. Suspicious projects are also tagged as duplicated.
“In this year’s analysis, the value of duplicated projects was worth N173 billion. We forwarded our analysis to the Budget Office of the Federation and the Federal Ministry of Finance. The duplicate funds are then taken back to the Ministry of Finance and asked not to be funded.”
Sulahiman stressed that the Commission is seeking the collaboration of citizens in its effort to prevent corruption from hampering the gains of constituency project initiatives while urging PRIMORG and other civil society groups not to relent in drumming the message of sustaining executed projects to citizens.
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio program PRIMORG uses to draw government and citizens’ attention to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
The program has the support of the MacArthur Foundation.