By Adedapo Adesanya
The House of Representatives has set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the disbursement of funds to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the federal government from 2015 to 2020.
This followed a motion raised by Mr Henry Nwawuba (PDP–Imo), calling for the investigation into the disbursement of special funds for public interventions received by agencies of government on the floor of the lower chamber of the parliament in Abuja.
He said that it was in a bid to ensure that such funds were properly utilised, expressing concerns that despite the huge amount of funds invested on special intervention funds, citizens continued to undergo untold hardship.
The lawmaker said that the House was also concerned that despite the huge loans to boost the economy, Nigeria still slipped into its second recession in less than five years.
He further expressed concerns that those agencies in charge of disbursing some of the special funds are unable to give proper accounts of how the monies were utilized.
He said that members were worried that most of the funds were not captured in the appropriation processes, adding that the National Assembly was not aware of such monetary allocations.
Mr Nwawuba stated that alleged fraudulent practices by agencies of government were sabotaging the efforts of the federal government, adding that if left unchecked, it could lead to the total collapse of the country’s economy.
He said that the federal government was constrained to revert to external and internal borrowings to augment domestic savings, the balance of payment deficits, and shortfalls in revenue.
“The federal government has also been borrowing quite substantially to fund projects and a range of public interventions;
“[I am] aware that some of the funds established by the federal government between 2015 — 2020 and the amounts released include; N7,689,002,462, Special Intervention MDGs, 2015 and N22,469,358,143, MDG special projects.
“Others include contingency, N7,229,622,307; special intervention 2020; N39,933,338,086 Special Intervention and Constituency projects of N3,002,315,957 among others,” he submitted.
