By Sarah NEGEDU
Huge sums of money meant for constituency projects in the Federal Capital Territory may have been diverted into personal accounts, as projects worth over N1.195billion allocated for, in the 2019 and 2020 budgets have gone without a trace.
An investigative report on the implementation of the 2019 and 2020 constituency projects in the FCT, shows that a total of N1.245 billion was budgeted in 2019 and 2020 for the implementation of 17 Zonal intervention Projects, ZIPs, also known as “constituency projects” across two federal constituencies and the FCT Senatorial district.
The investigation carried out through an initiative tagged; “Follow the Projects,” however shows that only one of the 17 constituency projects is completed, while 15 others, worth N1.195 billion, were untraceable as a result of lack of access to information and project data.
Director of the initiative, Daisi Omokungbe, said the implementation of 2019 and 2020 zonal intervention projects in the FCT and Ondo State is a mix of abandoned, non-existing and untraceable projects.
Omokungbe, in a press conference recently held in Abuja to mark the launch of the report, said the projects were categorised into abandoned, completed, due process, ongoing, tracked and untraceable.
He said the untraceable projects raised red flags for encouraging opacity, corruption and diversion of public funds for personal uses.
“In our moving round, tracking projects and engaging local stakeholders, they lamented the pains they go through on a daily basis which if some of the projects awarded were completed, the sufferings and pains would have reduced, and dividends of democracy would have been delivered to the people,” he said.
He added that issues of basic social amenities such as provision of water, health centres, local roads, school buildings and erosion control formed the major demands of communities.
He noted that in the course of the investigation, they issued over 20 Freedom of Information requests, FoI, to federal ministries, departments and agencies, but that only a few responded to the information and data being sought.
Efforts reach the senator representing the FCT, Phillip Aduda, was unsuccessful as he lost his father, Rt. Rev. Tanimu Aduda, last Wednesday and has been receiving condolence visits.
Also, members of the House of Reps did not respond to messages on their known mobile lines.
On projects in Ondo state, the director said, “The report of the three months’ investigation was published, submitted to our partners, and handed to Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, Chairman House Committee on NDDC at the House of Representatives at a meeting of a coalition of stakeholders from Ondo State in February this year.”
He also noted that the lawmaker had promised that he was going to ensure NDDC contractors come back to sites to complete their abandoned projects across the state.
Despite the money released for the 86 projects in Ondo State, only 30 were found trackable, while the rest were untraceable with no locations or actual descriptions.
The findings further revealed that six projects were abandoned, 14 were completed, four under due process, seven are ongoing, 31 were trackable, and fifty-two were untraceable.
“Follow the Projects,” is a social accountability movement and advocacy established by Technocrat Media Nigeria for the tracking of projects as provided for in the budgets of the government. The initiative is supported by MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Initiative for West Africa, OSIWA, through HEDA Resource Centre.
