Only 40% Constituency Projects Completed in 20 States in 2016 – BudgIT

Fri, Sep 1, 2017 | By publisher


Business

 

Budgit Nigeria says only 40.3 percent constituency projects were completed in 2016 in 20 states in Nigeria

 

By Anayo Ezugwu

 

BUDGIT NIGERIA, a civic technology organisation, has said that only 40.3 percent of constituency projects budgeted in 2016 budget were completed in 20 states. The organisation, which is interested in ensuring transparency and accountability in government budgets tracked 852 projects across 20 states between June 2016 and June 2017.

The states are Kogi, Ogun, Oyo, Kano, Edo, Delta, Sokoto, Kaduna, Niger, and Gombe. Others are Lagos, Ondo, Imo, Cross River, Ekiti, Osun, Kwara, Akwa Ibom, Kebbi, and Enugu.

The federal government last year released N100 billion to the National Assembly for constituency projects after it failed to consider President Muhammadu Buhari’s N180 billion virement request.

Seun Onigbinde, co-founder and team lead, BudgIT, in a statement, insisted that these projects, which many Nigerians have kicked against remained largely unexecuted and have little impact on the people.

According to him, the organisation’s project tracking officers in 20 states discovered that most of the projects were signed off and contractors paid most of their fees by government authorities without most of the projects being executed. “These statistics show that 40.3 percent of the projects were implemented, 13.8 percent are ongoing, 41.1 percent are uncompleted, while the locations of 4.8 percent are unspecified.

“In a number of cases across focus states, we noticed that 343 of the 852 projects identified in the 2016 budget remain wilfully unexecuted. Our research from Tracka’s Project Tracking Officers (PTOs) across the 20 states discovered that these projects were signed off and contractors got paid most of their fees with little by government authorities. This situation is to the detriment of citizens, who are often restricted from asking questions, due to a lack of information on project allocation and implementation status.

“This has been the situation since the inception of Tracka. For effective project tracking, it is imperative that project locations are clearly defined in the budget and made available to the public. Failure to do this is harmful to democracy, depriving communities and civil society organisations the opportunity to monitor and ensure proper implementation of government’s obligations to the people,” he said.

BudgIT said it discovered that the locations of 41 projects contained in 2016 budget remained unspecified. He said the organisation discovered that 2016 federal constituency projects within the National Assembly were labelled donations. “We reiterate that constituency projects should not be labelled donations by their representatives in the National Assembly, as this comes off as a malicious attempt at deliberately misinforming the public for selfish political interests.

“We demand that contract details be prioritised to ensure citizen participation in contract awards via the provision of accurate details of all contract`s (contractors’ names, government budget benchmark, terms of the agreement, bill of quantity, etc), placed in the public domain. Representatives should routinely engage their constituents in the budget-making process to ensure their needs are captured in every annual fiscal plan.

“Project locations should be spelt out, for easy access by citizens and organisations. As noted, in several cases, budget line items identified project titles, specifications and monetary amounts, but failed to establish the actual project location. Unclear locations and other such details mean certain projects are extremely prone to misappropriation of funds and corruption.”

BudgIT is a civic organisation that applies technology to track citizen engagement with institutional improvement to facilitate societal change. A pioneer in the field of social advocacy with technology, BudgIT uses an array of tech tools to simplify the budget and matters of public spending for citizens, with the primary aim of raising standard of transparency and accountability in government.

 

– Sept. 1, 2017 @ 11:45 GMT /

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