STAKEHOLDERS are alarmed that 116.97 million naira has been drawn from the federal government coffers to service the non-existing Office of Chief Economic Adviser to the President (OCEAP) in the last five years.
Eze Onyekpere, lead director, Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), who was reacting to a report by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) on how the non-existing office of President Muhammadu Buhari’s chief economic adviser continued to get budgetary releases after five years, raised the alarm during a radio program, Public Conscience, produced by the Progressive Impact Organisation for Community Development (PRIMORG).
Onyekpere knocked the National Assembly over the report, saying that it was unfortunate that the legislators, who were supposed to scrutinise the budget and play oversight function, approved budgetary allocation for the controversial office of the chief economic adviser to President Buhari.
“The budget itself, when it is prepared as a proposal, goes through the Budget Office of the Federation. There are budget defence sessions, it goes up to the Federal Executive Council before it is now approved and sent to the National Assembly.
Read Also: National Assembly approves budget for non-existing Office of Chief Economic Adviser to President for the 6th time
“So how come, the EFCC, the ICPC, the Nigerian Police and auditor-general and none of them has caught this mischief in the actual practice of budgeting in Nigeria?,” Onyekpere queried.
He asked that the petition be immediately sent out to the National Assembly and steps taken to make sure that whoever was culpable refunded all the monies spent on the office over the years through the judicial process.
“I think that there should be a next step to make sure that those behind this stealing are punished and the money is returned to the treasury.”
Onyekpere also called for credible Nigerians to be appointed to lead anti-graft agencies in Nigeria, stressing that corruption and impunity had now become part of the everyday experience in the country. He noted that every Nigerian should be worried over such a report because the nation was borrowing heavily to finance the 2021 budget amid other economic challenges.
“What is the bottom line of our lives that we are paying more for fuel, we are paying more for electricity and at the end of the day, we have inflation rate at about 16.4 to 16.5? The naira is getting more useless in terms of value, the salaries and earning power of livelihoods in Nigeria are not increasing.
“We are also one of the capitals of the world in terms of maternal and child death, and they say we have the highest number of poor people in the world. So, we should be bothered because this would not have been so if we have been utilising our money through a value for money approach,” Onyekpere lamented.
On his part, Olugbenga Adanikin, an investigative reporter with The ICIR, said that the corruption report cast a shadow of doubt on President Buhari’s promise to fight corruption when he emerged in 2015.
“President Buhari should act more because we want to see people go to jail. We want to see people who have been indicted, accused and the court has established that these people have been found guilty, to go to jail,” Adanikin advised.
It will be recalled that the National Assembly approved 46.86 million naira in the 2021 budget despite that no known personnel or government official could give accounts of the monies disbursed to OCEAP since 2016.
Between 2016 and 2020, the office has been funded regularly even with no one appointed to it.
Adeyemi Dipeolu, special adviser to the president on economic matters, office of the vice president, denied that he was the one spending the money. But officials tried to pin him to the office of the chief economic adviser, in a bid to cover up.
Read Also: Non-existing office of Buhari’s Chief Economic Adviser gets approval for N573.45m in five years
Corruption: How Nigeria has fared under Buhari
In a recent corruption rating and report by the Transparency International, Nigeria has dropped to 149 on 2020 Corruption Perception Index, the worst ranking received by Africa’s largest country in recent times. Nigeria also scored 25 out of a possible 100 points
In the last TI rating in 2019, Nigeria was ranked 146th out of the 180 countries surveyed, scoring 26 points out of a possible 100. On a scale of zero to 100 in TI’s rating, zero means ‘Highly Corrupt,’ while 100 stands for ‘Very Clean.’
This means that Nigeria is two steps worse off than she was in 2018 when she scored 27 points to place 144th out of 180 countries.
According to the latest ranking, Nigeria is now the second most corrupt country in West Africa with Guinea-Bissau the only country more corrupt than it in the sub-region.
You can reach out to me on Twitter via: vincent_ufuoma