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...
•Shocking no indicted person held accountable —Eze OnyekpereBy Soni Daniel, Northern Region Editor & Luminous Jannamike
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.
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.
Aside from diverted funds, which were recovered or completed projects hitherto abandoned by contractors, the outcome of phase one was a mixed bag of revelations. The tracking exercise revealed lots of mismanagement of funds and the non or shoddy execution of projects that would have had greater impacts on the lives and well-being of the people if they were executed to specifications.
On his part, Mr Eze Onyekpere, Executive Director, Centre for Social Justice, said: “It shouldn’t have been just a matter of recovering the money; there should have been some form of punishment and prosecution to deter such irresponsible conduct in the future. I am shocked that despite claiming to have conducted loot recovery, no one has been prosecuted or held accountable.
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