Still on the Ecological Fund The fund could be put to better use More than one year after announcing that it would enact a law to check perceived abuses in the disbursement of the ecological fund, the National Assembly has done nothing in that direction. Yet, early last year,Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Ahmed Lawan and chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment, Hon. Uche Ekwunife had expressed displeasure at the recklessness that pervades the disbursement of the ecological fund. Ekwunife said several efforts by her committee to obtain the statement of accounts of the ecological fund from the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) were to no avail, because “for over one year the Accountant General of the Federation has refused to make available the statement of accounts.” The ecological fund was established in 1981 to have a pool of funds that would be solely devoted to funding ecological projects. From inception, the fund originally constituted one per cent of the Federation Account, but was reviewed upwards to two per cent in 1992. Unfortunately, the management of the fund has been marred with controversy, essentially due to the discretionary powers given to the president in the disbursement. Given the obvious abuses recorded over the years, it says so much about the National Assembly that it has not addressed the problems. For instance, the Senate Committee once uncovered a litany of misdeeds in the application of the funds which include N154.9 billion on projects not related to the environment. In 2002, the Fund disbursed N928 million for non-ecological projects, just as N728 million was given as a grant to the Presidential Research and Communication Unit. In 2003, N1.9 billion also went to non-ecological programmes out of which N800 million was given to the Ministry of Aviation for the renovation of the Aminu Kano Airport and N150 million to Kaduna State Government to manage sectarian crisis in the state. The sum of N2.1billion went to non-ecological expenditures in 2004 and N2.77 billion was spent in 2005. In 2006, a total of N16 billion was spent as grants to Yobe and Ogun States for road constructions while in 2007, N24 billion was spent on the rehabilitation of the Sagamu expressway by the Ministry of Works. In 2008, the sum of N5.7 billion was advanced to the Ministry of Agriculture to fight food shortages which was said to be imminent at the time. In 2009, a total of N44.9 billion was spent by the Federal Government to fund its third- quarter spending warrant while in 2010, N34.6 billion was withdrawn from the fund for “treasury management” by the Federal Government. In 2010, N22 billion was withdrawn and shared out to some states and local governments, while N2.078 billion was withdrawn in 2011 towards the building of the 2nd Niger Bridge. The list, indeed, is endless. Such is the abuse of the ecology fund that officials of both the federal and state governments now see it essentially as a slush fund to be deployed for all manner of things. For instance, the former Governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, disclosed in 2006 that he diverted his state’s N1.6 billion share of the ecological fund to the 2003 general election campaign of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). At the end, the federal and state governments have reportedly misused about N400 billion meant for redressing ecological problems within the period of a decade, most of it spent buying vehicles and servicing other dubious projects. At a time the forces of nature are raging and Nigeria seems to be at the mercy of the environment, it is imperative that the ecological fund be deployed strictly to tackle such challenges. With several billions of naira going into the fund annually and given the enormity of the ecological challenge facing the nation, there is need to put in place regulations that would ensure a more transparent way of spending the money.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 05:06:36 +0000
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