The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has identified the northwest as the zone that has the largest concentration of constituency projects which are sponsored by national assembly lawmakers to get dividends of democracy to their constituents.
In its report entitled ‘Breakdown of 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) Allocations’ released in Abuja, ICPC said the zone beat the other five zones to emerge tops.
The report detailed the distribution of constituency projects worth N100 billion as contained in the 2019 national budget among the six geopolitical zones and Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
The chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, who presented the report in Abuja yesterday said constituency projects worth N17.97 billion were attracted to the northwest by lawmakers from the zone, while their counterparts from the north-central were able to influence constituency projects worth N17.90 billion to the area.
The northeast which attracted projects worth N16.06 billion came third.
The south-south took the forth position with N15.14 billion worth of projects; southeast, fifth with N14.85 billion of total budgeted project value while the southwest came last with constituency projects worth N14.28 billion.
A further breakdown of the value of constituency projects allocated to each of the 36 states of the federation shows that Kano State has the highest worth N5.2 billion with Niger State coming second with projects worth N4.4 while Zamfara and Sokoto states bring up the rear with N1.4 billion constituency projects apiece
ThisDay quotes Owasanoye as saying that the commission decided to carry out a detailed analysis of the allocation and execution of constituency projects given the controversy that had trailed the exercise over the years and the attendant allegations of corruption that had marred the realisation of the essence.
He said his team discovered that a chunk of the N100 billion allocated for constituency projects in the 2019 budgets was set aside for “intangibles” that would be difficult to verify.
Of the amount, the two largest subheads are empowerment (N26.1 billion) and capacity building (N9.3 billion), which his team suspected are susceptible to diversion by those involved in the allocation and execution process.
He also expressed concern that N80 million out of the budgeted N100 billion was discovered to be unclassified; adding that the ICPC team had to flag it because the possibility of such amount being stolen was high.
Besides the N26.1 billion for empowerment and N9.3 billion for capacity building, other sectoral allocations show that N14 billion was for projects for works; N8.8 billion for community development; N8.2 billion for power; N8 billion for education; N5.3 billion for health-related projects and N5.1 billion for social welfare.
Also, ZIP allocation to MDAs show that the Ministry of Agriculture with N15.4 billion has the lion’s share of constituency projects put in its budget followed by the Presidency with N13.3 billion. Other MDAs with high allocations are Ministry of Water Resources (N13 billion), Ministry of Science and Technology (N10. 7 billion), Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (N7.9 billion) and Ministry of Education (N7.6 billion).
However, while shedding light on the ZIP allocations to the MDAs, Owasanoye clarified that the allocation to the Presidency was for some MDAs under the direct supervision of the president and not for Aso Rock.
Owasanoye urged communities to take ownership of constituency projects so that they could get value for the money the federal government is spending on them.
He also said his commission was working to reduce the opacity and corruption prevalent in the concept of constituency projects and dispelled fears that the monitoring of the projects being done by the commission amounted to persecution.
According to him, ICPC is more concerned that lawmakers, contractors and supervising MDAs delivered on projects under their authority than in arresting defaulters or those trying to game the system.
He said the commission chose the path of not prosecuting defaulters but getting them to deliver on the projects because prosecution, given the nation’s judicial system, could drag on for so long to outlast his tenure in ICPC and even that of some of his successor.
