Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye,and James Ojo, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, alleged that members of the National Assembly frittered away over N1 trillion earmarked for constituency projects in the last 10 years.
Buhari, who spoke at a two-day National Summit on Diminishing Corruption in Public Sector at the State House Conference Centre in Abuja, lamented that citizens, particularly those in rural communities, had not felt the impact of the huge sum allocated by federal legislators as constituency projects.
The President said “It is on record that in the past 10 years, N1 trillion has been appropriated for constituency projects yet the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians can hardly be seen”.
He, however, expressed delight that through the actions of the ICPC on constituency projects, over 200 contractors had returned to site to complete projects paid for.
The event was organised by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in collaboration with the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC).
President Buhari directed the ICPC to go after government officials and contractors who collect funds for constituency projects without executing them.
He also called on the judiciary to embrace and support the creation of Special Crimes Court.
“The fight against corruption is not only for government and anti-corruption agencies alone. All arms and tiers of government must develop and implement the anti-corruption measures. I invite the legislative and judicial arms of government to support the creation of Special Crimes Court that Nigerians have been agitating for to handle corruption cases”, he said.
On his recent directive to all agencies of government to enroll into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the president directed ICPC to go after public institutions that were yet to comply as the policy was adopted to halt the padding of personnel budgets and misappropriation of capital budgets.
“I am aware that the Commission recently conducted System Studies and Review of many MDAs to evaluate systems and processes relating to transparency and accountability in personnel and capital spending through which you successfully blocked over N9 billion from being diverted from 2019 personnel budget.
“That was a proactive prevention measure. I have directed that all agencies of government must get on the IPPIS in order to eliminate the padding of personnel budgets.
“I urge ICPC to beam its searchlight on all agencies yet to get on the IPPIS and our e-government platform in order to fully halt the padding of personnel budgets and the diversion or misappropriation of capital budgets,” he said.
President Buhari at the event which marked the launch of the Constituency Projects Transparency Group (CPTG) Report Phase One, appealed to well-meaning Nigerians to join in the fight against corruption.
“I urge our development partners, civil society organisations and the media to continue to support our efforts to strengthen ethical values and integrity in Nigeria,” he said.
Buhari commended the new Board of the ICPC for launching new enforcement and preventive initiatives including the system study review, tracking of zonal intervention projects, otherwise called Constituency Projects, and the collaboration with the National Social Investment Office.
“I am delighted that through the effort of ICPC some contractors are returning to site to execute projects hitherto abandoned and that project sponsors are being held to account.
“The ICPC has my full support and the support of this government to hold fully to account contractors, complicit public servants and project sponsors who divert funds meant for constituencies or other people oriented welfare projects of our government or who by other means reduce the quality and value of such projects meant for our people.”
On asset recovery, the President reassured that his administration will continue to support anti-corruption agencies to recover all ill-gotten wealth and prosecute offenders, adding that all fully recovered physical assets will be sold and the proceeds remitted to the treasury.
Meanwhile, ICPC has disclosed that its preliminary findings revealed that 300 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) inflated their payroll by N12 billion.
ICPC Chairman, Bolaji Owasanoye, identified the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) as the two agencies allegedly mostly used to pad budgets.
“We discovered that some agencies of government are favourites for embedding of constituency projects irrespective of their core mandate and capacity to deliver or supervise projects.
“The attraction appears to be either corrupt tendencies within such agencies or the inherent weaknesses within them.
“Most notorious in this regard are Border Communities Development Agency and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, it had been discovered that MDAs duplicate contracts for projects using the same description, narrative, amount and location of award.”
Owasanoye added that part of the preliminary findings revealed gross abuse of personnel budget and inflation or padding of the nominal roll.
“We covered about 300 MDAs and the amount inflated was about N12 billion. As at today, we have discovered additional N6 billion making a total of N18.624 billion restrained by ICPC.
“The exercise is still ongoing, but we can confidently report that the culprit MDAs are mostly academic and health institutions. For example preliminary findings show the following: University of Benin Teaching Hospital N1.1 billion, Federal Medical Center, Bayelsa N915 million, Nnamdi Azikwe University N907 million, University of Jos N896 million, University College Hospital Ibadan N701 million, Usman Dan Fodio University N636 million and University of Ibadan N558 million.”
He said institutions and all those implicated would be given the opportunity to explain themselves.
“However, while investigations are on to confirm any credible explanations that they may have, we have alerted the Minister of Finance on our findings, and appropriate steps are being taken to ensure that the implicated MDAs will not be able to spend the excess amount built into their personnel budget.
“In the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the balances recorded for personnel were wrongfully utilised by MDAs for other purposes. That sum amounted to N18.39 billion. In light of these findings, we encourage full implementation of the directive that MDAs not on IPPIS should not be paid as our review shows that most of the guilty MDAS are not on IPPIS.
“In a similar vein, we found that some MDAs spent N9.2 billion of capital funds on overhead related items, contrary to extant financial regulations. We found to our surprise that some MDAs fail to remit tax and divert pension and NHIS deductions for unrelated payments, thus aggravating the sufferings of Nigerians.”
Owasanoy said those guilty of diversion and non-remittance would be dismissed and prosecuted.
“We recommend that diversion or non payment or remittance of tax, pension, health insurance or any statutory deduction should attract dismissal of head of the agency and immediate prosecution. Should government accept this recommendation ICPC will furnish government with list of defaulting MDAs,” he said.