Reps to probe federal agencies’ disbursement of N96.2bn intervention in 5yrs

The House of Representatives has resolved to set up an Ad-Hoc Committee to investigate the disbursement of intervention funds amounting to N96.2 billion received by agencies of the Federal Government from 2015-2020 with a view to ensuring that such funds were properly utilized.

Some of these funds include Special Intervention MDGs (2015) – N7,689,002,462; Contingency – N22,469,358,143; MDG Special Projects – N7,229,622,307; Special Intervention (2020) – N39,933,338,086; Special Intervention/Constituency Projects -N3,002,315,957, and Capital Contingency – N15,868,060,896.

This resolution was reached at plenary on Wednesday following the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance moved by Henry Nwawuba (PDP, Imo).

Moving the motion, Nwawuba noted that the Federal Government is constrained to revert to external and internal borrowings to augment domestic savings, balance of payment deficits and shortfalls in revenue.

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The lawmaker noted that the Federal Government has also been borrowing quite substantially to fund projects and a range of public interventions.

Nwawuba said he was “further aware that other interventions include National Water Rehabilitation Project, National Agriculture Technology Programme, and Salary Bailout to States, payment for Fertilizer, State Water Supply Project, State Agriculture Project, and FADAMA Project”.

He said he was “concerned that despite the huge amount of funds invested, citizens continue to undergo untold hardship”; “that despite the huge loans to boost the economy, Nigeria still slipped into its second recession in less than five years”; and “that those agencies in charge of disbursing some of the special funds are unable to give proper accounts of how the monies were utilized”.

The lawmaker was also “worried that most of the funds were not captured in the appropriation processes, thus the National Assembly was not made aware of such monetary allocations”, and “that alleged fraudulent practices by agencies of government are sabotaging the efforts of the Federal Government and, if left unchecked may lead to total collapse of the country’s economy”.