•How politicians, MDAs defraud FG through inflated, duplicated projects, by ICPC
From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Nigeria is battling the twin blight of revenue shortfall to run the economy and a swelling sovereign debt of about N81 trillion.
But amid these scathing challenges, the country has not successfully plugged revenue leakages found mainly in the legislative and executive arms of government in the form of inflated and duplicated contracts.
Studies undertaken by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) show wanton corruption that is stifling execution of projects in Nigeria. The types of corruption identified range from bid rigging and other procurement fraud, embezzlement, misappropriation and misapplication of scarce public resources, over-invoicing, bribery, abuse of office and shoddy execution, non-completion or outright non-execution of projects. These are committed in conspiracy between and among contractors, project supervisors, chief executive officers of government agencies and “sponsors” of the projects.
Executive projects, as opposed to zonal intervention projects (ZIP) are generally the total capital expenditures proposed and appropriated for by the executive arm of government for implementation in any particular budget cycle.
On the other hand, ZIP is that portion of the capital appropriation amounting to N100 billion per annum for projects to be executed in constituencies of members of the National Assembly.
According to ICPC’s Phase 4 executive project tracking exercise report, as endorsed by its chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, out of the 543 selected projects for evaluation, 109, amounting to N1,176,867,800.00, were found to be inserted, which effectively turned them to ZIPs.
The report emphasized that the insertions are done by both legislators and some members of the executive arm of the government in the budget-making processes.
The report noted: “Implementation challenges occur when the desired result on the target beneficiaries is not actualized. This is usually traceable to corruption and other unethical conduct perpetrated by officials of the implementing agencies, contractors and sponsors, especially with respect to inserted projects.
“Corruption is the biggest challenge in project delivery in Nigeria. Implementation challenges start when a huge amount of money is earmarked for projects but agencies in charge of implementation mismanage the fund or a substantial part of it in the guise of bill (project supervision) and other expenditure items as well as through shady and shoddy execution of the projects.
“Analysis showed a high volume of padded/inserted projects, which indicates that such projects would hardly be executed to standard. More often than not, the executing MDAs do not have the capacity to monitor the implementation of such padded projects. This derogates the value for money consideration in the execution of public-funded projects. Furthermore, budget padding clearly distorts national planning and coordination.”
The ICPC boss also asserted that, due to the commission’s persistent monitoring of ZIPs, sponsors devised a means of not only moving projects into the main national/mandate capital budget of MDAs but are also deliberately moving away from physical project execution (hard projects) and focusing more on empowerment/grants projects (soft projects) because of their fluidity and difficulty in tracking, post-execution.
In view of this, the commission decided that, within available resources, it would track empowerment projects pre-execution and during execution.
Actual field tracking activities commenced simultaneously across 19 selected states and the FCT in May 2022. The tracking teams visited various sites to ascertain the existence, level of execution, and with the assistance of the assigned quantity surveyor, evaluated the projects in terms of quality and quantity.
Projects supervisors from the executing agencies and, in some cases, the contractors were also brought along to ease identification of project sites as well as to respond to queries. Benefiting communities were engaged in the exercise to ensure community involvement and post-project sustainability and management.
Building on the successes and impact of the previous phases of the commission’s Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative (CEPTI), and considering that over 90 per cent of its national capital budgets is appropriated for and expended by the executive arm of the government, Phase 4 tracking exercise was solely focused on funded executive projects, spanning 2019 to 2021. These projects are meant to ensure coordinated and measurable development and address infrastructural deficit in a cost-effective, coordinated and sustainable way.
The CEPTI tracking exercise is fully funded by the ICPC, with some support from the McArthur Foundation. The ICPC said it would continue to auction assets officially forfeited to the federal government, in line with the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery and Management) Act, signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari on May 12, 2022.
It also said its phase 5 exercise would track 712 government projects and it would release the report when the exercise is completed.
