23112019

SATURDAY Vanguard, NOVEMBER 23, 2019 — 5
Constituency Projects: ICPC exposes lawmakers
*How N2 trillion went down the drain in 20 years,
*Lawmakers collect money but fail to execute projects,
*Others divert critical facilities for personal use,
*Many contracts inflated, yet poorly executed
*Empowerment items stashed away, not distributed,
*Border agency, SMEDAN most notorious vehicles for looting constituency cash,
*Youth empowerment, capacity building most abused expenditure items,
*N3.9b ‘floating’ in 2019 budget for ‘deployment’ by lawmakers
By Soni Daniel, Northern
Region Editor
FEW days after President
Muhammadu Buhari
whipped members of the National
Assembly for not accounting
for a whopping N1 trillion
meant for constituency
projects, the Independent Corrupt
Practices Commission,
ICPC, has further exposed the
various ways our lawmakers
fleeced the country.
The ICPC appears to have
caught the lawmakers napping
with a novel initiative to track
the constituency projects in a
pilot scheme covering 12 states
which were randomly selected
from the country. The tracking
covered projects purportedly
carried out between 2015 and
2018 and drew its experts from
the Budget Office of the Federation,
Accountant General
Office, Bureau of Public Procurement,
Auditor-General,
Nigerian Institute of Quantity
Surveyors, Civil Society organizations
and the media. The
outcome of the commission’s
investigation was quite revealing
and shocking.
ICPC found in the course of
its probe that apart from using
their positions to decide the
nature and cost of projects to
be ‘carried out’ in their respective
constituencies, lawmakers
also chose the ‘contractors’ who
in most cases were incompetent
but were closely related to their
political dynasty and had no
project execution experience or
technical capacity to handle
such assignments.
Beyond that, most of the lawmakers
diverted public projects
clearly provided for and paid
by the government and presented
them as if they were offering
philanthropic services to
the communities they were representing.
In this category were
also lawmakers, who sited key
government projects in their
private properties and homes
and gave the community the
impression that the projects
were presented to the community
by their families.
But the worst and most dangerous
disservice which the
lawmakers have done to members
of their constituencies, according
to ICP finding was that
most of them did not execute
the projects at all after the money
had been paid to their chosen
‘contractors’, which in most
cases turned out to be siblings
or political associates of their
project initiators.
Many other lawmakers simply
diverted and converted critical
equipment and facilities
meant for public institutions
like schools, hospitals, community
centres and public institutions
to their homes and pretended
as if such were personally
acquired for their family
use.
From the findings, which the
ICPC Chairman, Prof Bolaji
Owasanoye, presented to President
Muhammadu Buhari last
Wednesday at the State House,
it was clear to Nigerians that
the constituency projects have
become a steady source of manipulation,
treachery and diversion
of public good to the
personal use of some powerful
and influential politicians, who
use their power of oversight to
put pressure on the heads of
Ministries, Departments and
Agencies which they oversee to
do their biddings or be ‘invited
for questioning’ at the least
provocation.
The ICPC report said, “By this
initiative we have tracked and
seen to completion in the pilot
phase 255 projects out of 424
projects in 12 states spread
across the six geo-political
zones. The total appropriation
for the selected projects was
N24.32b out of which N22.27b
was awarded in contracts. By
monitoring the projects and
enforcing completion we
saved government about N2b
in recovery of diverted assets,
such as equipment for
schools, hospitals, farms, water
or energy projects, marginal
improvement back to site in
the selected states and a cumulative
number of 200 contractors
back to site across the
country in states where we
have not commenced enforcement
activities.
“We discovered that some
agencies of government are
favorites for embedding of
constituency projects irrespective
of their core mandate
and capacity of these agencies
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, BCDA, and Small
and Medium Enterprises Development
Agency of Nigeria,
SMEDAN.
“We also discovered duplication
of contracts with same
description, narrative, amount,
location, awarded by the same
MDA in order to bring the
amount allocated within approval
threshold of the executing
agency or to expend allocation
to sponsor of the constituency
project.
“Many of the contracts were
inflated yet poorly executed.
Substandard items were used
against specifications in the
Bill of Engineering Measurements
and Evaluation (BEME)
From Left: Bea Perez, SVP & Chief Communications, Public Affairs & Sustainability Officer,
The Coca-Cola Company; Doyin Salami, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council, Tony
Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holdings; and James Quincey, Chairman & Chief Executive
Officer,The Coca-Cola Company. During the Group Chief Executive Officer Coca-Cola Company
Offical visit to Nigeria on Business Development
thus diminishing the value of
the projects to the intended
beneficiaries. Many projects
were also not built to specifications.
Some contracts were
awarded without standard contract
documents available to
assist Quantity Surveyors evaluate
state of project in line with
the contract.
“Empowerment and Capacity
Building projects are very
popular but are highly prone
to abuse and very difficult to
track. We find that almost 50%
of budgetary allocations to
zonal intervention projects go
to these opaque activities.
“Empowerment items are
sometimes stashed away by
sponsors and not distributed
till following budget cycle
while in some cases same
items are re-budgeted and
duplicated. The subsequent
budget release is then diverted.
These anomalies are why
the effort of government in
creating jobs is not showing
because the money for empowerment
and capacity
building simply disappears.
“Some legislators or project
sponsors refused to show
project sites to the contractors
in cases where the contract
was not awarded to their preferred
company while in others
constituency projects were
sited on private property of
sponsor without transferring
title to the community. Yet in
other cases, some sponsors
directly converted procured
items to private use.
“As your Excellency will notice
in the breakdown before
you sir, N3.9b is embedded in
the 2019 zonal intervention
projects budget but not allocated
to any project or sector.
But we can see the states
where this money may be potentially
taken if it is released.
Needless to say, we are persuaded
sir that Mr. President
will not allow the release of
money embedded in the budget
for no particular purpose,”
the ICPC boss pleaded with
Buhari.
The unveiling of the dubious
modus operandi of the
lawmakers, which has sucked
the nation’s treasury over the
years hit them like a thunderbolt
and left them squirming
for some days. Only a few of
them managed to offer some
explanations which in the
main do not add up, given the
weight of evidence adduced
by the ICPC against them.
Senator Enyinanya Abaribe,
who managed to send a measured
and innocuous response
to the president’s accusation,
did so without any
facts and figure. The Minority
Leader said in a tacit tone,
“We are not worried by the
statement by President Buhari
that over N1 trillion has gone
down the drain in the name
of constituency projects without
anything to show for it.
The reason we are not worried
is because we know that
it was a statement that was erroneous.
Somebody must
have written a speech and
then put false information in
the speech.
“I have done constituency
projects and we have always
said that they are not done by
senators or members of the
House of Representatives.
They are domiciled in the executive
who execute it. If the
president said he has not
seen anything, he should ask
his ministers and his agencies
under him as they are the
people who have been executing
these projects,” Abaribe
stated.
But the Senate’s spokesman,
Godiya Akwashiki, a
new entrant into the NASS,
who has not yet done any constituency
project, simply opted
to keep out of the controversy
over the scheme and
claimed that the President
had not written to the Senate
over his concern about constituency
projects.
“Buhari is the President of
this country he spoke as Chief
Executive. Mr. President has
not written to the National Assembly
officially on this matter.
We have mode of communication
and I want to believe
if he has anything to write to
us, he will,” Akwashiki stated.
Although constituency
projects were well conceived
and properly situated within
the framework of the legislature,
the implementation of
the scheme over the years has
left much to be desired.