ICPC’s startling discoveries
The row over the N2.6 billion purloined money meant for the feeding of federal school students which the media erroneously said belonged to Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs almost diverted public attention from its main message. Otherwise, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission [ICPC] chairman Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye’s speech last Monday was a startling confirmation that corruption in this country’s public service is alive and well after five years of the Muhammadu Buhari Administration’s “anticorruption war.”
Owasanoye spoke at the Second National Summit on Diminishing Corruption with the theme “Together Against Corruption” and launch of the National Ethics and Integrity Policy held at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. He said, among other things, that government officials violated the sanctity of Treasury Single Account [TSA] through various illegalities, including by creating what they call “subTSAs.” He said “transfers to sub-TSA were to prevent disbursement from being monitored.” It was in such a sub-TSA that ICPC discovered N2.67 billion in payments to some federal colleges for school feeding, during lockdown, when the children were not in school. Not surprisingly, he said some of the money ended up in personal accounts.
Owasanoye also said under the Open Treasury Portal review that ICPC carried out between January and August 15, 2020, 72 out of 268 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had cumulative infractions running into billions of naira. While 33 MDAs tendered explanations that N4.1 billion was transferred to “sub-TSA”, N4.2 billion paid to individuals had no satisfactory explanations.
He also said “common cases of misuse of funds” were found in many of the 78 MDAs that ICPC reviewed in the education sector alone. He said some of the discoveries included life payment of bulk sums to individuals/ staff accounts, including project funds; nondeductions/remittance of taxes and IGR; payments of unapproved allowances; bulk payments to micro finance banks; payment of arrears of salary and other allowances of previous years from 2020 budget; payment of salary advances to staff; under-deduction of PAYE; payment of promotion arrears due to surplus in personnel cost; abuse and granting of cash advances above the approved threshold and irregular payment of allowances to principal officers.
Other terrible practices that ICPC uncovered included N2.5 billion misappropriated by a late senior civil servant in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Then also, ICPC’s 2020 constituency and executive projects tracking initiative found that absence of needs assessment resulted in community projects being abandoned because they do not require them. Many projects were sited in private houses or private land thus appropriating common assets to personal use, while absence of synergy between outgoing project sponsors and their successors resulted in abandoning of projects.
Indeed, corruption, waste, mismanagement and fraud are all alive and well in the public service despite the anti-corruption war. The ICPC boss made these revelations in the presence of President Buhari, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Tanko Mohammed, Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum Dr. Kayode Fayemi and other top government officials. It firmly buttresses what many experts have said over the years, that the anti-corruption fight should not be limited to arresting and prosecuting corrupt persons, very important though that is.
In the long run, what will have more impact is system reform and the use of technological tools to make perpetration of corrupt acts more and more difficult. Or where it still occurred, technological tools should make its discovery and successful prosecution of the perpetrators fairly easy, unlike what happens now when too many public officials get away with corrupt acts and even those who are caught and prosecuted, often slip away due to the difficulty of proving cases. It is time to act on these findings by unrolling a comprehensive plan of system reform to curb and detect corruption as part of the anti-corruption fight.
Technological tools should make its discovery and successful prosecution of the perpetrators fairly easy, unlike what happens now when too many public officials get away with corrupt acts and even those who are caught and prosecuted, often slip away due to the difficulty of proving cases.