Plans To Siphon N450bn Via 2021/22 Budgets Uncovered

Plans by known but yet-to-be-named individuals to siphon a whooping N450billion using the 2021 and 2022 budgets have been uncovered.

This was made known by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and other related offences during an interface with the Senate Committee on Finance today.

The ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, told the committee that about N300 billion was padded into the N13.59trillion 2021 budget by the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

Duplication worth N100billion was also noticed in the case of the 2022 budget of N17.12 trillion 2022 asides the N49.9b tracked as salary for ghost workers between January and June this year.

These sordid details emerged while the ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, had an interface with the Senate Committee on Finance.

He said the huge discovery was made possible through scrutinisation carried out on approved projects for the various MDAs.

”N300billion would have been wasted by the Federal government on duplicated projects inserted into the 2021 budget and N100billion for same purpose in the current fiscal year if not tracked and intercepted by ICPC.”

” The same preemptive move, saved the country from spending N49.9billion for salaries of ghost workers put on fictitious payroll by the fraudulent MDAs between January and June this year.”

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“The good thing about the preemptive moves made by us is that monies for the fraudulent acts were prevented from being released to the affected MDAs and it is gratifying that the Finance Ministry and Accountant General Office cooperated with us,” he said.

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“From our own end, detection of such projects is done by verifying their locations and names, upon which we tell the appropriate authorities not to release wrongly budgeted monies for them.”

The gratifying thing, according to Owasanoye, is that the names of MDAs involved in projects’ duplications in the budgets are already known and would be forwarded to the committee.

In his reaction, the chairman of the Committee, Senator Olamilekan Adeola, said the operational cost of the agency would be increased from N1.8billion.

“This committee is impressed by proactive ways your commission is adopting in the fight against corruption.

“Your submissions clearly show that all hope is not lost for our dear country as far as fighting corruption is concerned.

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“Your operational cost which is N1.8billion will be increased as the required impetus for more proactive measures against corrupt practices across the various MDAs.”