BudgiT, a non-profit organisation, said it had discovered N732.5 billion allocation for empowerment projects in the 2024 budget of the federal government. The organisation made the allegation in a statemen. It said its open-source service delivery monitoring platform, Tracka, made the discovery, describing it as vague. BudgiT said the N732.5b allocation was higher than the N646.5 billion allocated to health projects in the budget. It said the government had not shown any signs of tackling critical emergencies by its allocations to the health sector in the 2024 budget in spite of the fact that Nigeria recorded the second-highest child mortality rate in the world.
“Tracka maintains that empowerment projects are vague and challenging to track due to their nature. They are also used as a funnel to transfer public resources to party loyalists, resulting in the misuse of public funds,” the organisation stated. BudgIT said its Tracka discovered a total of 4,440 empowerment projects in the 2024 budget which were previously limited to constituency projects. It said these projects had over the years gradually seeped into capital projects through insertions by the National Assembly. For instance, the National Assembly inserted 7,447 projects valued at N2.24 trillion in the 2024 budget. Tracka identifies this as a problematic trend, considering the nation’s huge infrastructure gap and budget deficits”
The organisation said further analysis of the budget also showed that over 2,558 projects worth N624 billion were allocated to agencies outside their mandate. “An example is the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN)-ERGP20241489-allocated N5 billion for the Procurement and Distribution of Official Vehicles to Selected Traditional Rulers in the Six Geopolitical Zones in Nigeria (Multiple Lots). Another is the Nigeria Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NiOMR)-ERGP20245718–allocated N2.32 billion to construct a 3.5km Road from Methodist Church lbu to the Eri River,” it alleged. Gabriel Okeowo, the BudglT’s Country Director, said the implications of assigning projects to agencies outside of their mandate were that it undermines the monitoring, evaluation, and sustainability of these projects.
“These agencies lack the expertise and personnel to ensure quality service delivery for these projects, leading to under-delivery another colossal waste of taxpayers’ money and Scarce resources,” he said. BudgIT urged the anti-graft agencies to probe the anomalies in the 2024 budget to forestall diversion, misappropriation, and embezzlement. It also called on elected representatives and the ministries, department and agencies to provide timely updates to the public and ensure the quality implementation of these projects to ensure Nigerians derive maximum benefit from public funds.
