After decades of operating special accounts in the country, the abuses that have characterised their management recommend them for scrapping. Unfortunately, these funds − Stabilisation Fund, Ecological Fund, Natural Resources Fund, among others – created by Acts of the National Assembly to meet national exigencies now serve interests other than those for which they were set up. Apparently, they are promoting public treasury looting.
The Federal Government established the Ecological Fund through the Federation Account Act of 1981, in order to have a pool of funds that would be solely devoted to addressing ecological challenges. The funds are disbursed together with the federal allocation to all tiers of government. Because the funds are being shared more as spoils of war than for development, a great part of the North is being threatened by desertification, while Anambra State alone has 1,000 erosion sites, and the Niger Delta region is devastated by oil extraction activities. The Ecological Fund has a shortfall of N302 billion, according to the House of Representatives Committee on the Environment. This is so as the government uses 1.46 per cent to calculate inflows into the account, instead of the 2 per cent prescribed by the Act, which set it up. However, the over N300 billion that has accrued to the fund is recklessly being spent; the MDAs serially take loans from it, much of which are not repaid.
Nigeria’s three tiers of government are guilty of this flagrant abuse. The Chairman of the House Committee on the Environment, Uche Ekwunife, two weeks ago told the Permanent Secretary in the Ecological Fund Office, Goni Sheikh, that contracts worth N3.1 billion for erosion control in a state in the South-East zone needed to be properly accounted for. The committee had earlier said the executive found it inconvenient to open Ecological Fund books for oversight.
Inexplicably, the Federal Government has made N189.533 billion charges on the fund for projects unrelated to ecological problems. Out of the N60 billion taken as “loans” from the fund, N30.2 billion has not been repaid, and may never be, including the N100 million given to the Presidential Communication office during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration (1999 – 2007).
From the Stabilisation Fund, the government gave $45 million as loans to Ghana and Sao Tome and Principe in 2004 and 2007; Ministries, Agencies and Departments took a N13 billion car loan; just as N87.7 billion was given to the Independent National Electoral Commission, while the Directorate of Pilgrim Affairs received a N16.2 billion loan from it in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in violation of the country’s secularity as expressed in the 1999 Constitution.
The fund, a fiscal buffer for hard economic times, would have come in handy now, as the country is reeling in the face of crashing crude oil prices. It is the same story with the Natural Resources Fund of N783 billion, meant for Solid Minerals sector development. Nigeria has 34 mineral types that are dormant today because a substantial amount from the fund set aside for their development has disappeared.
Regrettably, these abuses are also rampant at state and local government levels which receive regular allocations for ecology. Many governors cannot be trusted with the allocations for their states. A former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, in his explanation to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in 2003 of how he spent the N1.8 billion Ecological Fund receipts, including a N100 million political donation, eloquently illustrates this.
These abuses have been well documented in National Assembly reports. One of them from the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, chaired by Ahmed Lawan, in April 2013, revealed that a total of N1.04 trillion, out of N1.5 trillion that accrued to the Special Accounts between 2002 and 2012, was grossly mismanaged. Lawan explained that “loans” to institutions stood at N580 billion, out of which N347 billion had yet to be recovered.
Indeed, these are milestones of absence of good governance and accountability in public finance management. And we dare say, is anybody really in charge? Where the state or its institutions lead the assault on the constitution and other extant laws, the political space then is no more than a jungle, or an animal kingdom where the rule of law is an alien contraption.
On the contrary, special funds work elsewhere and help during emergency situations. The United States always depends on billions of dollars in its Federal Emergency Management Agency, Disaster Relief Fund to aid victims of its many hurricanes, like that of Sandy and Katrina, before Congress could approve aid. The Congress in 2005 replenished the coffers of FEMA with $60 billion to take care of basic needs of the victims such as water, food, shelter and heat. The money was also used by the US Army Corps of Engineers to restore coastal watersheds and build flood walls.
While the US Congress monitors the country’s Disaster Relief Fund, evident in its November 30, 2014 report that showed a balance of $6.9 billion, the reverse is the case here, a fact the Senate President, David Mark, admitted. While the Senate debated Lawan’s committee report, Mark said, “If we had done well since 2002, this should not have happened. But we never bothered to look into this. Overall, we share in the blame, both the executive and the legislature.”
It is lamentable that ours has become a country where there are no consequences for bad behaviour. That was why the Senate investigation only ended with Mark’s lamentation. This malfeasance in public treasury management must stop.
These accounts have become leprous fingers; cutting them off has, therefore, become imperative.
