More instances of official corruption have emerged from the latest Report of the Constituency and Executive Tracking Exercise (Phase 5).

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) shared this published report on Thursday.

FIJ saw that projects were used to siphon public funds and contractors were unlawfully paid much more than approved funds for some projects. The report also cited other forms of mismanagement and misappropriation of public funds through zonal intervention projects (ZIPs), better known as constituency projects.

According to the report, ₦529,699,351.60 was recovered in cash and ₦1,551,937,543.41 was recovered in assets, totalling a conservative figure of ₦2,081,636,895.01. This amount is a modest estimation since these were just the ZIPs considered for tracking (there were more ZIPs left untracked in those three years) and the ICPC claimed some contractors who had initially abandoned projects worth ₦3,540,829,993.00 returned to the sites to resumed work.

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“In tracking and investigating grant projects, the Commission discovered that in some cases, intended beneficiaries got paid far less than it was provided in the BoQ,” the report read in part.

“For instance, a grant project where beneficiaries were supposed to receive N100,000 each, only N10,000 to N20,000 would be given. In another instance, a grant project of N150 million was distributed to only 10 people with each receiving between N10 million and N15 million.

“The Commission found in some cases, particularly projects executed in Ondo North Senatorial District, the chief executive officer of Centre for Atmospheric Research, Ayingba, a subsidiary of National Space Research and Development Agency, was in the habit of arbitrarily and unlawfully overpaying contractors much more than the contract sums without any approved variation. All overpaid companies were connected in some ways to the sponsor of the projects.

“A larger percentage of empowerment items under the 2020 and 2021 Appropriations were found stashed away in warehouses or private properties of the sponsors.

“In Anambra North Senatorial District for example, the Commission found some projects worth N1.1 billion procured since 2020 hidden and hoarded in the warehouse of the sponsor. So, also in Cross River South, various undistributed items worth N1 billion were found.

“The Commission has since enforced the distribution of such items to beneficiaries within the affected districts or federal constituencies.

“331 projects (Soft Projects and Empowerment Projects) representing 47% of selected projects valued at N9.2 billion were tracked. Consequently, there was hardly any of such projects tracked on which recoveries and or confiscation was not made as the projects were not executed in line with the Bills of Quantities (BoQs).

“Training exercises, for instance, that were meant to be conducted for two weeks were conducted in just one day. Also, names of beneficiaries were recycled such that their names appeared on two or more of such projects spanning different locations.”

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A minimum of N100 billion has been budgeted annually for constituency projects since 2000.

Many constituency projects have gone unchecked and the institutions saddled with oversight functions only recently responded to numerous petitions. The ICPC managed to track 703 of 1,377 preselected projects in 21 states between 2019 and 2022 in this report.

Four projects were abandoned, 19 were not executed and the site of 7 projects could not be found.

FIJ recently reported the abuse of constituency projects multiple times. Some of those reports can be found here, here and here.