Indications emerged that the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission has uncovered National Assembly members’ uncompleted constituency projects worth over N45 billion.
Documents exclusively obtained by our correspondent indicated that the projects were tracked by sectors and states, showing the numerical and percentile breakdown of the projects.
This is part of the Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative of the ICPC, which is in its fifth stage, following the completion of the fourth stage in 2022. It was learnt that the tracking had helped the anti-graft agency to track about 4,000 projects valued at about N200bn.
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It was gathered that the ongoing phase five is in collaboration with the Budget Office of the Federation, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, Bureau of Public Procurement, the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, media practitioners and civil society organisations that constitute the steering committee.
They include 205 healthcare projects, 76 water supply projects, 67 environment and natural resources projects, 66 education projects and 40 power projects, all tracked across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
According to the documents, taking the lead is the FCT with 13.01 per cent; followed by Lagos State with 9.48 per cent; Kano and Borno states, 8.92 per cent each; Plateau State,5.58 per cent; Nasarawa State, 5.39 per cent; Enugu State, 5.2 per cent; Ebonyi State, 4.83 per cent while Ogun, Kaduna and Yobe states have 4.28 per cent each.
Similarly, Ekiti and Taraba states have 3.53 per cent each; Adamawa, Kebbi, and Edo states, 3.35 per cent each; Delta, 2.97 per cent; Akwa-Ibom, 2.6 per cent; Benue, 2.94 per cent; and Rivers State, 1.12 per cent.
The fifth phase, involving 712 government-funded projects, commenced in November, 2022 in 20 states, namely Kaduna, Jigawa, Sokoto, Katsina, Kwara, Niger, Kogi, Cross River, Delta, Rivers, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Anambra, Enugu, Abia, Borno, Bauchi, and Gombe states.
The exercise, which kicked off in 2019, is said to be focused on investigating fraudulent procurement practices in the award of contracts for the selected projects across the country.
The ICPC, in a statement in November 2022, said it aimed to ensure that all government-funded projects were executed fully to their specifications and to make recoveries where the project costs were either inflated by contractors or were poorly executed.
(Punch)
