Constituency projects: How senators, reps steal billions — ICPC

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences
Commission has accused National Assembly members of stealing
billions of naira in the name of constituency projects.

The ICPC, in a report tagged “Constituency Projects Tracking
Group”, tracked 424 projects from 2015-2018 constituency projects
between June and August 2019 across the 12 states of Adamawa, Akwa
Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Edo, Enugu, Imo, Kano, Kogi, Lagos, Osun and
Sokoto as well as the FCT, accused the lawmakers of duplicating of
contracts using the same description, same narrative, same amount,
same location and awarded by the same agency.

The ICPC, in the report signed by its chairman, Bolaji
Owasanoye, alleged that the lawmakers did this to bring the amounts
allocated to them within certain approval threshold of executing
agencies to avoid ministerial tenders.

It also alleged insertion into budgets of constituency projects
under the guise of “capacity building and empowerment
projects”.

“These Capacity Building and Empowerment projects have become a
convenient conduit for embezzling public funds by the sponsoring
legislators and the executing agency as they are difficult to track
and verify due to their “soft” nature,” the report, President
Muhammadu Buhari had in November said there has been very little
benefits to the grassroots from the ₦1 trillion that had been
earmarked for constituency projects in the last 10 years.

“This is so in spite of the wide disproportionality between
appropriations for constituency projects and statutory projects of
some implementing agencies, especially those of Small and Medium
Enterprises Development Agency and Border Community Development
Agency.

“For instance, in 2015, while the total mandate allocation for
SMEDAN was N1,592,323,599, constituency projects allocation was
N5,814,369,579,” the report said. “95 per cent of these
constituency projects allocations were for empowerment and capacity
building projects. This appropriation jumped up in 2016 to
N11,120,099,958; 741 per cent of mandate budget with empowerment
and capacity building projects taking 99% of the amount.”

“The size, number and types of zonal Intervention projects
domiciled in SMEDAN and BCDA, for instance, have turned them into
conduits for, and means of abuse of constituency projects and
therefore vulnerable to corruption.”

The ICPC recommended that empowerment and capacity building
constituency projects be temporarily suspended as “they are just
free money without accountability, aside from being difficult to
track. If however they must go on, the implementation process and
mechanism must be completely overhauled to put it strictly under
absolute control of the executing agency.”

It also recommended that “In order to reduce the influence of
the sponsoring legislators on the emergence of a preferred bidder
and strengthen the bidding process, project sites must be
determined and given by legislators before advertisement for, and
award of contract so that award letters will be specific and
particular about projects locations”.

The spokesman of the Senate, Godiya Akwashiki, did not answer
phone calls by Daily Trust seeking his reaction to the
allegations.

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