October 06, (THEWILL) – The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, on Wednesday, said that over N13 billion in diverted public funds was recovered in September 2024.
According to the Commission’s Chairman, Musa Adamu Aliyu, “Over the past year, the ICPC has made significant progress in discharging its mandate. For example, we recovered over N13 billion in diverted public funds in September 2024 alone. This is just one of the many ways we have worked tirelessly to fulfil our mandate.”
From Aliyu’s statement on the Commission’s strategy and the institutions covered in its operation, it is easy to see how N13 billion could translate into stolen trillions of Naira over the months before September.
The Anti-Corruption and Transparency Units (ACTUs) in Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), he said, are the monitoring mechanisms of the Commission.”
Public corruption stinks in Nigeria. ICPC’s one-month account disclosure is just a tip of the iceberg that has been on the rise for years without action.
For instance, in 2015, the Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) indicted 59 out of 114 Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDAs, which had been queried by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation in its 2015 report. Some of the MDAs answered the summons of the Senate Committee, others shunned it, claiming that they had submitted reports to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the ICPC.
Five years later, the same story repeated itself. This time it is a concern raised by a coalition of eight civil society organisations, which, unable to contain the stench in the MDAS and Ministries, raised the alarm over the cesspool that public corruption had become in the country.
The eight CSOs said their investigation showed that 160 MDAs and Ministries in the country were found to have failed to submit their financial statements or management reports to the Office of the Auditor-General. They urged the Federal Government to prosecute officials of Ministries and MDAs indicted by the audit reports submitted by the Auditor-General of the Federation
The CSO groups included Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA), Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), YIAGA Africa, Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), African Centre for media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), Yes Project, Social Action and Protest 2 Power.
Leaders of the groups are Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, CISLAC; Ezenwa Nwagwu, Say No Campaign; Jaye Gaskia, Protest to Power, Chido Onuma, AFRICMIL; and Samson Itodo, YIAGA Africa, made the call at a news conference on Monday in Abuja.
According to them, public corruption is a blatant disregard to constitutional provision of section 85 of the 1999 constitution and the financial regulation 321 (v), which mandates all parastatals to make such submission annually.
They said, “Interestingly, 11 MDAs were reported to have submitted their financial statements or audited financial reports to the office of the AGF since inception. Yet, they have continued to enjoy resources appropriated by the National Assembly and the Office of Budget and National Planning for subsequent years. The report also revealed acute financial mismanagement by MDAs and their failure to remit surplus funds, in billions, back to the country’s treasury.’’
According to them, the overwhelming recklessness of these MDAs and their chief executives have caused the country significant waste of time and resources, poor performance and also set the country backward economically and infrastructure-wise.
Obviously, the Ministries and MDAs and their officials are the culprits here for over almost two decades that this unending corruption has persisted. But more culpable is the entire government system that tolerates, sustains and encourages this corruption. Imagine the money that would have been looted since January 2024 if N13 billion was plundered in only one month!.
And here is our government that has made borrowing a matter of state policy when a determination to block wastages and prosecute corrupt officials would have saved the country billions.
Unfortunately, as has often happened in the past, the ICPC only disclosed its findings but never related what happened or would happen to the indicted Ministries MDAs and their officials. This is encouraging corruption.
It is on this note that we demand that the ICPC releases the list of MDAs implicated in the latest discovery as a first step to overcoming this recurring issue of public corruption. Indicted officials should be prosecuted and the MDAs and officials made to return the stolen money. Enough of this media rigmarole that serves to boost the profile of anti-graft agency only to repeat itself again.
