NEITI Indicts PTDF, NDDC, Others

Fri, Dec 19, 2014

By publisher

5 MIN READ

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The audit report published by the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has revealed how the federal and state governments and their agencies mismanaged and misapplied funds allocated to them

|  By Anayo Ezugwu  |  Dec. 29, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT  |

THE Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, audit reports are not new with  heart stopping revelations it had dug up in the past about the misdemeanors in the extractive industry sector. The story is also not different in the recently released report which showed that there was reckless use of financial resources available to both federal and state governments in the country between 2007 and 2011.

NEITI carpeted some federal government agencies and nine oil rich state governments for mismanaging funds that accrue to them. Some of the agencies are Nigeria’s Excess Crude Account, ECA, Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Natural Resources Development Fund, Ecological Fund, Petroleum Technology Development Fund, PTDF, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETfund, and Stabilisation Fund. The states mentioned in the report are Nassarawa state.

The NEITI audit report released on its website focused on how nine resource-rich states in Nigeria that are endowed with oil, gas and other mineral resources. The states have not been able to use the monies accrued to them to advance the wellbeing of their indigenes.

It also showed that Nasarawa State, one of the underdeveloped states in the country, notwithstanding its rich solid minerals deposits had budgeted and grossly misappropriated huge funds meant for the construction of a hydro power plant.  Nasarawa, according to the audit, had paid about N1, 471,625,617 in 2008 for a 20 megawatts, MW, Farin Ruwa hydroelectric power project with no actual work done at the project site. NEITI found that the only structure at the project site is a sign post and a block of building used as the security post, with no access road to the dam.

The report also examined remittances and management of extant special development funds such as ECA, NDDC, Natural Resources Development Fund, Ecological Fund, Petroleum PTDF, TETfund, and Stabilisation Fund. It discovered that there were anomalies in the management of most of the funds.

The report showed that monies set aside in two special frameworks – the natural resources development fund and ecological fund, which were for special purposes, had been discretionarily used for purposes other than what they were lawfully created for.

While shedding light on the management of monies allocated to the special funds within the period under consideration, the audit report noted that total transfers into the natural resources development fund in the five-year-period amounted to N365 billion but that these monies were not actually used for the expected purposes.

It stated that not many Nigerians were aware that the natural resources development fund which was set up to develop alternative sources of revenue from natural resources existed but that it was used for other purposes. For instance, N275 billion was used from 2007 to 2011 to service budget deficits, N94 billion used for the procurement of fertilisers, N106 billion was released to the ministry of agriculture as loan, while N350 million was released to PenCom for the purchase of a new office building. The natural resources development fund, it explained, is now in debit of N339 billion as a result of withdrawals for reasons other than its objectives.

On the derivation and ecological fund which is domiciled in the office of the secretary to the government of the federation, a total of N217.456 billion was allocated to it, but its utilisation was entirely different from its purpose. For instance, N6.7 billion was released to the Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA, for the provision of engineering infrastructure in Kubwa and Karshi from the fund, while the National Emergency Management Authority, NEMA, which is statutorily entitled to 20 percent of the fund to aid its quick response to natural disaster, only got N23 billion from the fund with an outstanding N19 billion owed to it.

Other parties that indirectly benefitted from the fund were ministries, departments and agencies, state governments and Nigeria’s military formation. About N93 billion, N10.4 billion and N10 billion were reportedly released to the federal government, ministries and military from the fund amongst others.

The report also stated that while the Ecological Fund office which is set up as a fund disbursing unit in the secretary to the government of the federation, it was not allowed by law to initiate or implement projects. But it awarded 139 projects worth more than N40 billion and paid out more than N24 billion to project contractors and owing over N16 billion but only completed 36 of these projects. Additionally, requests by state governments for funds to finance state-specific ecological problems in their states were equally granted directly by the president without recourse to the ecological fund office and processes set up to access the fund, therefore overlooking extant lawful procedures.

On the states’ management of funds that accrued to them, the audit said that with the exception of Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, other states should re-evaluate their recurrent expenditure profile, especially the overhead costs and free up resources for sustainable development.

Imo State, for instance, it explained allocated only 2.3 percent of its total revenue to education and health, while 72 percent of revenues that accrued to it went to recurrent expenditure covering government running costs, wages and overheads.

Bayelsa spent 140 percent and 125 percent of its total revenues in 2009 and 2010, respectively as recurrent expenditure, therefore borrowing money to pay salaries and expenditure on capital projects.

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