- Reveals 536 Projects Have Not Been Started
68 per cent of the 1497 federal constituency projects approved in the country’s 2018 budget have not been delivered, a new project tracking report launched on Wednesday by BudgIT has said.
The report revealed that only 475 projects representing 32% of the projects nominated by federal lawmakers have been completed as of November 2019.
Doing further assessment on the constituency/zonal intervention projects between June 2018 and November 2019, the report stated that 144 projects are currently ongoing; 536 have not been started; 42 remain abandoned; 224 located in unspecified locations, noting that 49 projects were not tracked.
According to the Principal Lead, BudgIT Nigeria, Mr. Gabriel Okeowo, the organisation tracked the projects across the nation through its platform called TRACKA, designed to enable citizens follow up on budgetary capital expenditure and constituency projects in respective communities to enhance service delivery by all tiers of the Nigerian government.
“We have a presence in 586 local government areas across 26 states in Nigeria and we have tracked over 15,859 projects in 7,589 towns and organised over 7,612 town hall meetings across the country. With increasing appeal for this project, we plan to scale up to all the 36 states of the federation,” Okeowo told The New Diplomat during a media chat while launching the report in Lagos.
The report listed challenges which have continued to hamper constituency projects’ performance in the country to include: proliferation of empowerment projects; contract inflation; unspecified project location in the budget; use of substandard products and citizens unawareness of budgetary provisions among others.
Giving score card on the individual state among the 26 states where projects were tracked, the report uncovered that of the 77 projects sited in Lagos in the 2018 budget, only 16 have been completed. Delta 54: 27 completed; Ogun 60: 21 completed; Kebbi 62: 44 completed; Imo 100: 14 completed; Kano 61: 4 completed; Gombe 64: 40 completed; Kogi 69: 24 completed; Enugu 97: 21 completed among other states mentioned. While in Cross Rivers, out of the 69 projects allocated to the state, none has been completed as of the time of publishing this report.
Co-founder and CEO BudgIT, Mr. Seun Onigbinde explained that a lot of empowerment projects have become soft ground for federal lawmakers to carry out sharp practices like contract duplications to defraud the Nigerian citizenry.
He said his organisation has been working with the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Crimes Commission (ICPC) to curb excesses among lawmakers and agencies where projects are often domiciled.
“Recently, we have been collaborating with the ICPC to ensure that there’s transparency in the execution of constituency projects. There is also need for cooperation among the MDAs that should track project performance,” Onigbinde said.
He said only 30 per cent of funds have been released so far for 2019 constituency projects, stressing that poor release of funds for projects has continued to affect implementation across the country.
The report recommended that empowerment projects should be reduced to the bearest minimum in yearly budgets and that government should embark on strategic allocation of funds to reduce irrelevant projects. It also called on the government to prioritize needs assessment in project allocation and stop the sabotage of capital projects by punishing dubious characters.
