2020 Budget Implementation: ICPC Indicts 51 Health Institutions, Mops Up N147bn

The review of the 2020 budget implementation by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) has uncovered manipulations by ministries, department and agencies (MDAs) leading to the indictment of 51 health sector institutions while a total sum of N147 billion was mopped up.

The commission had earlier from the 2019 exercise, mopped N42 billion that would have been lost via the personnel cost of the 2019 budget in a review that has revealed anomalies and distortions of the country’s public finance and also showing that those given the responsibilities to manage the country’s resources. lack transparency and integrity.

ICPC Chairman, Bolaji Owasanoye said the ICPC system review, though statutory, was triggered off by the 2017 Auditor-General’s Annual Audit that indicted some educational institutions.

Owasanoye speaking at a one-day interactive session titled ‘Transparency and Fiscal Discipline in Implementation of FGN”, that was jointly organised by the Budget Office of the Federation (BoF) and the Commission, noted that findings from the review that covered personnel cost allocation and capital development fund between 2017 and 2020 reveal manipulations by most MDAs that received both appropriation and releases beyond their actual needs.

“In 2019, ICPC reviewed 208 agencies of government that are funded from the Federal Treasury and came up with outstanding results which included the discovery of N31.8bn personnel cost surpluses for 2017 and 2018, and misapplication of N19.8bn and N9.2bn from Personnel Cost and Capital Fund respectively.

“Consequent on these findings, a sum of N42bn unspent surplus allocations for Personnel Cost for 2019 alone was blocked from possible abuse and pilfering mostly from health and some educational institutions”.

“This implies that if we had covered the entire civil service structure of all MDAs the figures would be staggering”.

Consequently, the commission with the collaboration of the BoF, extended the review to the 2020 budget with more focus on the health and the education sectors owing to their importance in the country.

The discoveries in the health sector were shocking to the commission which noted that 51 institutions were indicted for one infraction of the other.

“Summary of Findings from 51 Health Sector Institutions include padding of nominal rolls including the inclusion of outsourced staff, warrant releases in excess of actual personnel cost needs, inadequate budgetary overhead allocation and inadequate or non-budgetary allocation for outsourced services.

Others are widespread misuse of Personnel Cost allocation on non-personnel related expenditure especially on outsourced services (N4.5bn), unspent excess balances despite abuses and misuse (N4.86bn) and fraudulent diversion by role players of funds through manipulation of account numbers of beneficiaries on the GIFMIS Platform.

Also, were the discoveries that Remita payment system not allowing for the matching of account numbers with account names and thus making fraud easy, in addition to inordinate balance staffing levels between Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres.

In totality, the ICPC review led to the mop of N42 billion on personnel cost in 2019 while the commission was able to mop up N147 billion in 2020 alone, according to Owasanoye.

The minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Ahmed Zainab who was represented at the interactive by the permanent secretary, Special duties, Aliyu Idris Shinkafi noted that as part of measures to curb incessant lockout of MDAs from IPPIS, a committee headed by the D-G, Budget Office has been constituted to make a recommendation on how to resolve the issue while hoping that today’s interactive session will make recommendations on how to enhance transparency and fiscal discipline in the implementation of the FGN Budget.