Ministries of Finance, Budget mum over allegations of project duplications

Despite startling revelations of project duplications in the 2024 budget, the federal ministries of finance and its budget counterparts have kept mum over the allegations.

Indeed, BudgIT Nigeria highlighted projects that are inserted in agencies of government that do not match their areas of focus and competence.

According to BudgIT Nigeria, citing contents of the 2024 budget, the National Assembly allocated N100 million to the Cocoa Research Institute in Ibadan to construct streetlights in Lagos State.

Not only that, the same Institute is also spending N100 million to procure motorcycles in Osun, N100 million on health centre construction in Ondo, and N200 million on classroom renovations in Rivers State.

Meanwhile, the primary function of the Institute is to conduct high-quality research in cocoa, kola, and coffee as well as to provide facilities for teaching and research with the identified agricultural products.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) got N100 million to purchase tricycles, another N100 million to renovate schools yet another N100 million for streetlights, and N100 million for the sinking of boreholes.

NAN also has an allocation of N300 million in its 2024 budget to buy and distribute tricycles (keke) in Abia, renovate schools in Bayelsa, and install streetlights in Rivers.

Again, N80 million was allocated to a Space Agency for pregnancy sensitisation.

As an agency responsible for mechanising Nigeria’s agriculture through innovative research to improve food security, the Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation in Ilorin, Kwara State, was allocated N35 million to construct an office for the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Oyo State.

The drama continues with Cocoa Research Institute in Ibadan getting the mandate to construct streetlights worth N100 million in Lagos State.

The mandate of the Institute was extended to cover the supplying of motorcycles with N100 million in Osun State, to spend another N100 million on health centre construction in Ondo, and N200 million on classroom renovations in Rivers.

The mandate of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDAN) is to work towards assisting small and medium-scale enterprises to overcome poor infrastructure in the management of business operations and accessing financial services amongst other tasks.

In the 2024 budget, the agency got N5 billion allocation for the provision of cars for traditional rulers and building boreholes worth two billion naira in Kaduna state.

As expected, outrage has continued to trail the development.

Recall that Senator Abdul Ningi had raised concerns over an alleged budget padding of about N2 trillion. Rather than investigating the allegations, Senator Ningi was slammed with suspension from the law-making chambers.

Speaking on the allusion that allocation is different from actual spending or release of appropriated funds, a public analyst, Oluseun Onigbinde, said the budget is not just a projection but an appropriation act, which gives legal binding to the spending.

“If you want 1000 examples of where an agency without the requisite mandate is delivering a project in a very poor manner, we can as well bring it on. This is a govt that has extended budget implementation to 24 months,” he said.

Allocations of projects to agencies of government that do not have the needed competence in the budget have been a recurring issue in the national budget.

An investment banker, Tolulope Alayande said the latest development is not shocking.

He explained: “This is not shocking, but that it continues to happen year after year is simply disheartening. Perhaps, the government needs to focus on areas like this to plug corruption and resource leakages rather than introduce policies that have impoverished many who do not have access to state funds.”

Although there are arguments about fund allocation, released funds, and funds expended, some experts believe that inserting projects that do not correlate with the focus of agencies is a clever way to misapply funds.

Alayande insisted that the wrong insertion of projects stems from a bad budgetary process and outright corrupt acts.

With low budgetary performance that is below 35 per cent year-on-year, the budgetary process seems to give an impression of big money available to be spent when such funds are an illusion.