How Politicians Use Projects To Steal -ICPC

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) in Abuja yesterday gave insight into how politicians use empowerment and capacity building projects to steal public funds.
Chairman of the commission, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, gave the details at a National Summit on Diminishing Corruption in the Public Service, organised by ICPC in collaboration with the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Owasanoye said empowerment and capacity building projects were very popular among the people, yet vulnerable to abuse and very difficult to track.
“We find that almost 50 per cent of budgetary allocations to zonal intervention projects go to these opaque activities. Empowerment items are sometimes stashed away by sponsors and not distributed till following budget cycle.
“In some cases, same items are re-budgeted and duplicated. The subsequent budget release is then diverted.
“These anomalies are why the effort of government in creating jobs is not showing because the money for empowerment and capacity building simply disappears,” he said.
According to him, the findings emerged from the ICPC’s constituency projects tracking exercise covering the period from 2015 to 2018.