VANGUARD
Five years after the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, launched with fanfare, a robust effort to verify the execution of constituency projects by Nigerian lawmakers across the country, the anti-graft agency has failed to prosecute those it indicted in its yearly reports in accordance with the Act setting up the commission.
The Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000 which established the ICPC vested it “with the responsibility for investigation and prosecution of offenders thereof”.
Records have shown that at least N2 trillion has been sunk into the so-called constituency projects in Nigeria between 2003 and 2024 without any concrete results to show in terms of projects and programmes that could add even marginal value to the people of Nigeria. The huge cash, which is dispensed in the sums of N95 billion to the 109 senators and N100 billion to 360 House of Representatives members yearly, is meant to provide additional quick impact schemes to the communities where lawmakers come from and quicken the pace of development in those places.
On April 2, 2019 when it launched its initiative, the ICPC focused its attention on 12 states, taking along officials from the Budget Office of the federation, Accountant-General Office, Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors and some journalists to track the projects claimed to have been undertaken by lawmakers in the states of Kogi and Benue in the North Central, Adamawa and Bauchi in the North East, and Sokoto and Kano in the Northwest. Others were: Imo and Enugu in the South-east, Lagos and Osun in the South-west and Edo and Akwa Ibom states in the South-south.
Between 2019 and 2023, the commission has carried out numerous verification exercises across the length and breadth of Nigeria and found some disturbing levels of graft ingrained into the constituency projects by lawmakers. Evidence seen by the commission also confirms that rather than abate, the venom of looting the treasury has been sharpened year-on-year by those who are eager to use constituency projects as a seamless avenue to draw from the public till and smile to their banks.
After verifying constituency projects across the country, the ICPC in its report in 2022, frowned seriously at the deep-seated misnomer that has continued to rob the nation of funds. However, the commission did not do more than render scathing remarks. Although the commission claimed that it found instances where lawmakers awarded contracts under their constituency projects to themselves or their proxy companies, it did not have the courage to mention the names of those involved in the illicit acts but admitted that the overall amount involved in constituency project fraud ran into billions of Naira.
As an unwritten rule guarding the verification programme, the ICPC has been very reluctant to expose those found to have inflated constituency projects or diverted the cash meant for the projects while it has also remained silent over the lawmakers indicted and has failed to prosecute anybody for the constituency projects fraud. But early this week, the commission came again with its generic report of achievements, claiming that no fewer than 50 unnamed contractors, consultants and officials of MDAs were being probed under its phase five tracking project. It shared the report on its Twitter handle also known as X.
The anti-graft agency also boasted that no fewer than 200 bank accounts used for the fraudulent transactions in respect of constituency projects were frozen and cash worth N5.6 billion was recovered and as cumulative savings for the government. The ICPC spokesman, Azuka Ogugua, however, declined to respond to an inquiry by Saturday Vanguard on what they were doing to prosecute those their own reports indicted over constituency projects.
Although ICPC has launched the fifth phase of the verification programme and rendered its reports, it has also discovered to its chagrin that the country was still losing billions of Naira to the antics of lawmakers, government officials in critical ministries, departments and agencies. There were constituency projects in which contractors were proxies of the nominating lawmakers and top government officials.
READ THE FULL STORY IN VANGUARD
Connect with us on our socials: