By Tunde Abatan, Contributing Editor
The Nigeria media has come a long way in the emergence of the country, its independence from colonial rule and under the military dictatorship.
Yet, the decision to checkmate its activities through the obnoxious Hate Speech and Fake News bills now before the National Assembly has not discouraged agents of state like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and National Orientation Agency (NOA) supported actively by the ActionAid Nigeria from seeking the support and collaboration of the media in changing the narrative of the implementation of constituency projects.
The projects have become part of the ad-hoc arrangements of elected members of the National Assembly in delivery of democracy dividends to their constituents but which implementation has fallen short of the provision in the national budget.
In most cases, indications in the past ten years are that only 60% of the projects for which over N1trillion have been released are completed.
According to Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, the ICPC Chairman, it has become imperative for the media to be involved in ensuring citizens role in the monitoring and implementation of projects scattered all over the communities in the country and help lift the areas out of poverty.
While launching a new campaign titled “My constituency, My Project”, in Abuja last week, the ICPC boss said though he is not out to probe NASS members and their agents, but as part of ICPC efforts to fight corruption, it began the Constituency Projects Tracking Group in conjunction with partners such as the Nigerian Institute of Surveyors, office of the accountant general of the federation ,budget office, bureau of public procurement, office of the Auditor-General of the federation, some civil society groups and the media.
He said the group has gone to twelve states of the country to track constituency projects whose contracts have been budgeted for and awarded, adding that the exercise revealed a lot of wrongdoings concerning how the contracts were carried out resulting in the people not benefiting from the constituency projects proposed by their representatives.
According to a booklet released in Abuja on ICPC’s role, it described constituency projects to include health, education, or infrastructure projects recommended by legislators at federal level (including senate and house of representatives) or state house of assembly, or projects identified by government agencies and recognised as beneficial to the people for government to carry out in their various constituents for the benefit of the people they represent.
The ICPC urged the media to educate the people in communities on the need for them to know that “these projects are funded by public money raised from taxes paid by citizens and from other sources of government revenue the projects are not paid for from the pockets of the sponsors”.
The ICPC also wants the community to monitor level of work done as reports have revealed cases of poor quality work, abandoned work or no work at all as the money goes into private pockets or where equipment is purchased for public projects but are diverted to private use, or even where money is spent on projects and equipment but they are left to rot and dilapidate. Hence, the ICPC wants community people to take more interest in these projects.
The ICPC also observed that constituency projects which may include empowerment projects such as the distribution of motorbikes and sewing machines are difficult to track for transparency and accountability and are often used to divert public funds. It, therefore, canvassed that such projects should be discouraged or closely monitored.
The Chairman said communities, where projects are sited, must support ICPC by reporting projects implementation to improve accountability and transparency.
He also sought the cooperation of legislators to help in bringing succour to their communities by implementing projects for which funds were budgeted and released adding that the commission is not interested in probing but to ensure implementation.
He also revealed how ICPC’s intervention has forced contractors who had abandoned projects to return to the site adding that “what is the essence of probing that will stall the projects for years and increase the suffering of the people for which projects at meant to bring relief”.
Hafiz Mohammed, ICPC Project Coordinator spoke of its discovery of how the government has released the money,” and the money never gets to the communities because some people sat on the money”.
He also revealed how political differences in some areas of the country stalled some projects and equipment left to rot away because politicians disagree with former initiators of such projects.
Mohammed revealed how a hospital project with equipment supplied was allowed to rot away in Edo state because some politicians disagreed and in some cases legislators in Benue state prevented projects been executed while in some cases, “politicians kept projects in their pockets or sited such in their personal private premises only to convert such to personal uses when they leave office.”
ICPC revealed it had recovered over N1.8billion on some abandoned constituency projects through its enforcement actions in the last three months.
But Moktar Adamu of the office of the Accountant General told gathering at the launch that the office had opened a website tagged-opentreasury.gov.org for people to log in to know how much was released for specific constituency projects to legislators. Also CISLAC, a civil society organisation also asked citizens to log on to.www.eptracker.org to monitor constituency projects implementation.
Dayo Olayide of McCarthy foundation said most initiators of constituency projects are wicked as the money is often diverted to other uses.
He queried while road projects are never constructed to last long, noting that it is not justifiable awarding a road project that will only last for six months.
On the role of agencies and institutions saddled with the task of monitoring quality of projects, he said: “nobody is asking how much is allocated and why are these road projects breaking down so early”.
For effectiveness, participants at the lunch want the ICPC and NOA to take monitoring and enlightenment programme to all the 774 local governments in the country to get citizens participation for results on constituency projects.