…Prof. Owasanoye: Commission Uncovers massive financial irregularities in 51 health institutions in the country.
BY SEUN DANIELS
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other-Related Offences Commission (ICPC), has said that it blocked N189 billion through a review of 208 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government between 2017 and 2020.
The cumulative discovery, it said included discovery of N31.8 billion personnel cost surpluses for 2017 and 2018, and misapplication of N19.8 billion and N9.2 billion from both personnel and capital costs.
The disclosure which was made known in its 20 years’ anniversary publication, said consequent on these findings, N42 billion unspent surplus allocations for personnel cost for 2019 alone was blocked from possible abuse and pilfering mostly from health and some educational institutions. ICPC was established in 2020.
It said: “In 2020, the ICPC flagged N147 billion personnel costs that would have been diverted by government agencies.
“Similarly, between 2018 and 2020, the Commission flagged the sum of N220 million that some MDAs had diverted from tax and other third party deductions such as union dues.”
According to the Commission, the overall objective of the system review is to reform the systems and procedures of public agencies with a view to identifying and eliminating, preventing, blocking and obstructing opportunities for corruption.
The exercise, ICPC targets detecting areas of vulnerabilities, actual weaknesses, leakages and corruption risks and to recommend ways of strengthening these systems and removing the discretionary gaps and such opportunities for both individual and institutional malfeasance on public resources.
In addition, the review also targets shoring up public resources for government and making them available for utilisation in delivering good governance and the dividends of the country’s democratic processes.
Often, these system study review lead to full blown investigation of egregious anomalies or enforcement measures like asset recovery and prosecution, it said.
ICPC, said: “The implication of this is that if the ICPC had covered the entire civil service structure of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government, the figures would be staggering.
In 2020 the ICPC extended the review with more focus on health and education sectors which touched the lives of ordinary citizens and are critical to meeting any of the internationally recognized development goals but is a major headache to budget execution.
“In addition, it commenced a review of Educational Institutions indicted in the 2017 Auditor-General’s Annual Audit Report for a wider range of financial infractions. In December 2019 the Federal Government launched the Open Treasury Portal onto which all payments from N5m and above by MDAs are uploaded for the purpose of transparency and public scrutiny.
“Following this launch, the ICPC immediately began studying payment data on the Portal again with focus on educational and health institutions.” ICPC, said.
While at it, the issue of payments of feeding allowance to federal unity secondary schools was thrown up and it had to carry out further investigations on expenditure on meal subsidy releases that remained constant despite the lockdown during which schools were closed and students were away at home.
In response to its findings, the federal government decided to set up the transparency portal quality assurance and compliance committee with ICPC as a member.
The committee, according to ICPC scrutinized payments on the portal and periodically sends lists of agencies with serious infraction for further review and sometimes investigation and enforcement action.
In the spirit of collaboration, the Commission said it reported back its findings on cases of fraud or unaccounted but despite confronting erring ministries and MDAs with federal circulars prohibiting these activities, the infractions continue.
This development had made it compelling for stronger measures to be put in place on the part of government and anti corruption agencies.
While speaking on the development, the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other-Related Offences Commission, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye (SAN) said so far, the Commission has uncovered massive financial irregularities in the operations of 51 Federal Government health institutions in the country.
Owasanoye was appointed as the ICPC Chairman in 2017. Before then, he was a member/Executive Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption.
He was appointed into PACAC by President Muhammadu Buhari to promote the reform agenda of the government on the anti-corruption effort as well as advise the government on the prosecution of the war against corruption and the implementation of required reforms in Nigeria’s criminal justice system.
