ILLEGAL disbursement of public funds is a serious breach of the country’s financial regulations, which is punishable in line with our extant laws. But where the government is the champion of abuse of its own financial rules, it weakens its moral authority to fight corruption. Such violation also opens the floodgates to fraud. This is one of the plagues of our 15-year-old democracy as documented in a recent audit report on the abuse of N994 billion special funds.
In another telling insight, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which carried out the audit that covered five years –2007 to 2011 –said the funds were either not remitted as statutorily required, nor applied for the purposes for which they were set up. These special funds, which include the Ecological Fund, National Resources Development Fund, Niger Delta Development Commission, Stabilisation Fund, and Petroleum Technology Development Fund, were set up to deal with specific economic exigencies and human capacity development as in the case of PTDF.
This pattern of absolute absence of public accountability is familiar. During President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration (1999-2007), Joshua Dariye, then Governor of Plateau State, was accused of sharing the state’s N1.8 billion Ecological Fund allocation. Part of the money was given as donation to the South-West wing of his political party and another chunk to some beneficiaries whose identities were kept secret by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The details of how the Obasanjo administration itself fiddled with the sundry funds are grimly familiar, too. From the Stabilisation Fund, $45 million loans were given to Ghana and Sao Tome and Principe in 2004 and 2007; just as the Ministries, Departments and Agencies took N13 billion as “car loans” from the pool; and N87.7 billion was given to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The NRDF has yet to get the N339 billion due to it. According to the Ledum Mitee-led NEITI, out of the N680.53 billion due to the NDDC, only N216.9 billion was paid to it, leaving a balance of N463.6 billion unaccounted for.
From the President to the Minister of Finance, no authority cares a hoot about the management of these funds with regard to due process. Every year, the country runs hither and thither in search of ways and means to fund budget deficits, whereas the Stabilisation Fund primed for such an emergency is diverted. The Natural Resources Fund of N783 billion earmarked for the development of the solid minerals sector suffers the same fate. Nigeria has 34 mineral types, still dormant because funds that would have been applied for their development have disappeared.
From Obasanjo to the Jonathan administration, irresponsible governance has continued to blight the laudable objectives of setting up these funds. Annually, gully erosion devastates many roads and communities across the country while funds dedicated for its amelioration end up elsewhere. So bad was the erosion crisis in 2011 that South-East governors ran to President Goodluck Jonathan to demand that the area be declared a disaster zone. As the management of these funds is shrouded in secrecy, nobody can doubt anymore that they have been turned to slush funds for public officials to abuse at will.
Our rulers are living in their own world where impunity is the rule. But public funds belong to the public, not a self-appointed aristocracy. We once made it clear that special funds are usually earmarked for specific areas of need and are intervention facilities designed to tackle peculiar problems that normal budgeting may not fully solve. They are certainly not meant to serve as pocket money for public officials or to be “borrowed” by our fiscally reckless governments. As creations of law, they were never meant to be diverted to uses other than what was specified in the enabling laws. But the Nigerian government continues to advertise itself as arguably one of the world’s most profligate and reckless spenders.
Our lawmakers must bear their share of the blame for their lack of enthusiasm in ensuring that abusers of the funds are punished. The world over, transparency and accountability are benchmarks used in managing public finances. The duties and powers of the lawmakers as conferred on them by the constitution are enough to checkmate executive excesses. Why the National Assembly has chosen to abdicate its responsibility, especially when the public treasury is being despoiled, should raise our eyebrows.
This fact was indirectly underlined by the Auditor-General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura, who was present when NEITI presented its report. He bemoaned the lawmakers’ failure to consider audit reports of the MDAs submitted to the parliament for about 12 years now, which chronicled the serial abuse of public funds.
It is a shame that our elected representatives catch cold whenever corruption, the bane of the country’s development, sneezes. The lawmakers should turn over a new leaf and ensure that the N994 billion is accounted for. Otherwise, they stand accused as being part of the rot.
This is the right time for the legislature to address the issue.
