Political Officeholders Hike MDAs’ Budgets To Get Houses In Return – ICPC

Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has said it is investigating politically exposed persons (PEPs) who increase budgets of some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in order to get houses purchased for them by the organisations.

This was revealed by the chairman of the ICPC, Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, at the 2022 fourth national summit on diminishing corruption in the public sector in Abuja yesterday.

The ICPC chairman, who did not reveal the identities of the PEPs due to ongoing investigation, said: “As is now widely publicised ICPC has intensified its scrutiny of personnel and capital cost of MDAs leading to proactive restraining of surpluses or duplications in the budget. Just last week the commission in collaboration with the Budget Office and stakeholders met with some MDAs on the recurring surpluses in their payroll to determine proactive measures to improving the budget process. This is towards separating outright fraud from administrative lapses.

“We also actively review the budget to prevent abuse by senior civil servants and PEPs who sometimes personalise budgetary allocation for direct benefit. In one case a PEP successfully increased the budget of an agency in order for the agency to buy a property from him. In another case the PEP inserted soft projects worth over N7billion for a catchment population of about one million people in the name of empowerment. Both cases are under investigation.”

Owasanoye further said, “Corruption in education manifests in different ways such as recruitment of unqualified or unfit persons to teach at primary, secondary or tertiary levels; admission racketeering; examination malpractice, diversion of revenue for and within the sector, operation of illegal academic institutions especially at the tertiary level, abuse of power and procurement rules by management and governing councils both of academic or regulatory institutions.”

Speaking on some of the actions taken by the ICPC to tackle corruption in schools, the agency’s chairman said: “In response to the recent epidemic of sexual harassment in the education sector ICPC has constituted a special team on investigation and prosecution of sexual harassment in secondary and tertiary institutions.”