Thread by @ICPC_PE

Excerpts of speech by Chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye at the opening ceremony of Summit on Diminishing Corruption in the Public Sector.

First let me thank the President for the leadership and unequivocal support that the ICPC has enjoyed since inauguration in February.

Permit me sir to share briefly our efforts in these areas in the past 10 months and the modest gains therefrom.

Sir, In April we commenced the tracking of constituency projects covering the first term of Mr President from 2015 -2018. Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPS) ...

.. as they are called, enjoy annually a captive budgetary vote of N100b

By this initiative we have tracked and seen to completion in the pilot phase 255 projects out of 424 projects in 12 states spread across the six geo-political zones.

The total appropriation for the selected projects was N24.32b out of which N22.27b was awarded in contracts.

By monitoring the projects and enforcing completion we saved government about N2b in recovery of diverted assets, such as equipments for schools, hospitals, farms, ..

.. water or energy projects, marginal improvement from use or supply of substandard materials, recovery of money from over valuation, identification of vulnerabilities and preventive measure for future projects.

We forced 34 contractors back to site in the selected states and a cumulative number of 200 contractors back to site across the country in states where we have not commenced enforcement activities.

In line with the government’s vision we prioritized education and health projects which made up almost 60% of projects we inspected nationwide.

As your Excellency will notice in the breakdown before you sir, N3.9b is embedded in the 2019 zonal intervention projects budget but not allocated to any project or sector however we can see the states where these money may be potentially taken if it is released.

Needless to say, we are persuaded sir that Mr. President will not allow release of money embedded in the budget for no particular purpose.

Mr President sir, when you inaugurated the current Board of ICPC you directed that we scale up our prevention mandate because prevention is better than cure. In this regard we widened the use of our powers under section 6(b-d) of our enabling law to scrutinize the practices, ..

... systems and procedures of MDAs in respect of personnel cost from 2017 to July 2019 and 2018 capital development fund.

Part of our preliminary findings, the summary of which are included in a visual narrative in your folders revealed gross abuse of personnel budget and ...

... inflation or padding of the nominal role. As at the time we went to press we had covered about 300 MDAs and the amount inflated was about N12b. As at today your Excellency we have discovered additional N6b making a total of N18.624b restrained by ICPC.

The exercise is still on going but we can confidently report that culprit MDAs are mostly academic and health institutions. For example preliminary findings show the following:

- University of Benin Teaching Hospital N1.1b
- Federal Medical Center, Bayelsa N915m.

- Nnamdi Azikwe University N907m;
-University of Jos N896m;
- University College Hospital Ibadan N701m
- Usman Dan Fodio University N636m
- University of Ibadan N558m;

These institutions and all those implicated will be given the opportunity to explain themselves however, while investigations are on to confirm any credible explanations they may have, we have alerted the Minister of Finance of our findings and appropriate steps are being ...

... taken to ensure that implicated MDAs will not be able to spend the excess built into their personnel budget.

Let me note with regret sir that in the 2017-2018 fiscal year the balances recorded for personnel were wrongfully utilized by MDAs for other purposes due to ...

lack of proactivity by late enforcement and related agencies. That sum amounted to N18.39b.

In light of these, sir we encourage full implementation of your directive that MDAs not on IPPIS should not be paid as our review shows that most of the guilty MDAS are not on IPPIS.

In a similar vein, we found that some MDAs spent N9.2b of capital funds on overhead related items contrary to extant financial regulations.

We found to our surprise that some MDAs fail to remit tax and divert pension and NHIS deductions for unrelated payments.

Some MDAs abused the e-payment policy of government thus making payments through staff accounts instead of to actual beneficiaries. Most egregious in the current cycle of review is the Federal Ministry of Water Resources where N3.3b was paid out in about a month through ...

... the accounts of staff. ICPC arrested 59 directors from the ministry and investigation is ongoing.

Sir, I have focussed on our efforts in three key areas. Other achievements of the Board of ICPC since inauguration in include:

Asset Recovery: In the past 10 months we have recovered over 250 physical assets worth about N32b in seizures, interim forfeiture orders ..

... and final orders. We also have cash recoveries in interim and final orders in Naira and USD amounting to over N3b.
#DiminishingCorruption