Obj, Yar’adua, Jonathan wasted N1.5trn —Senate •On Sao Tome, Ghana, others

A report by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts has disclosed that N1.518 trillion voted into the Special Funds Accounts (SFA) between 2002 and 2012 was alleged to have been misappropriated.
Of the said funds, the Senate committee, in its finding, discovered that a total amount of N1.043, 230, 990, 411.61 was abused during the period.
This was as the Senate indicted successive goverments during the period under review and also blamed itself for not carrying out its oversight functions in respect of the funds.
These were disclosed by the Senate, on Tuesday, during the consideration of the report submitted to it by the Senate committee.
The report covered revenues accrued and disbursed from the three components of the accounts namely, Natural Resources Account, Derivation and Ecological Account and Stabilisation Funds Account from 2002 when the account was created, to June 2012.
The Development of Natural Resources Account and Derivation and Ecology accounts belonged to the Federal Government, while Stabilisation Account belonged to the three tiers of government.
The report indicated that rather than used the funds for the purpose it was intended, it was mainly used for loans to government agencies, states and local government, as well as private companies.
It indicted former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the late President Umar Yar’adua and President Goodluck Jonathan of alleged gross misapplication of the funds in the accounts.
Blaming itself and the entire National Assembly for the scam, virtually all the lawmakers agreed that they all failed to provide required legislative guidelines for the operations of such accounts by the executive arm of government.
In the report, presented by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Ahmed Lawan (ANPP Yobe North),  the executive was accused of mismanaging the total sum of N701,489,494,960.61 voted into the Natural Resources Accounts within the period under review, indicating an 100 per cent abuse of the funds.
Some of the abuses, according to him, included the N2 billion loan granted for payment to Gitto Construzioni General Nigeria Ltd on July 19 2005; N3,745, 505,000 loan granted to the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs for purchase of a Chancery in Tokyo on 25 November 2004 and N864,725,036.00 loan granted to the National Health Insurance for National ID Card production on 18 April 2005, among others.
Under the Derivation and Ecological Accounts, the report revealed abuses such as N10 million given to the Niger State government in March 2003 for building an abattoir in Bida; N800 million used for the resurfacing of the runway in Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano, in January 2003; and N750 million released for the development of Abuja Downtown Mall in January 2007 (a project which was said to be non-existent).
In the Stabilisation Account, where 75 per cent of abuse was recorded, a N12 billion loan was granted to Ghana and Sao Tome & Principe on 22 September, 2004 and 7 May 2007; N142.6 million given to Gong Publishing Company as loan of debt owned by local government councils and N2.8 billion loan granted to pay the Federal Government’s 50 per cent contribution to the Phase 1 of the Pioneer Car Finance Scheme for public servants in para-military agencies on 22 May, 2007.
Angered by the report, the senators unanimously condemned what they described as executive recklessness displayed in the management of the funds over the years by the successive administrations involved.
Senate President David Mark, in his remarks, said the National Assembly should be blamed for the gross mismanagement of the funds for the past 11 years, since there was no legislative guideline for the executive in that respect.
“These three accounts under review are not bad to be managed by the executive in any way, but the problem is the discretionary template upon which they have been disbursed, leading to one abuse or the other.
“It is totally an indictment of the National Assembly. It is a wake-up call on us to look into how these funds are managed through legislative guidelines,” he said.
In his reaction, Chairman of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Committee, Smart Adeyemi, said,“when government doesn’t spend funds for purposes of helping the public, it can be described as rascality of the executive.”
He wondered why the government continued to “grant loans to governments that have enough. It’s encouraging them to misappropriate public funds,” and called for proper investigation of the Lawan Report to ascertain the extent of misappropriation of public funds.
 Senator Abdul Ningi: “This is sheer crass executive recklessness and the National Assembly’s indifference to it. Going through the report, it is a combination of personal driven issues between those who collected loans and those who abused it.
“We must not sweep away these findings, they must be thoroughly investigated to the fullest.”
Also commenting, Senate Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba said the impunity shown in the report confirmed his earlier belief that public finances still remained opaque after 14 years of democratic governance, as they were under military rule.
“All the misapplications of funds carried out by the executive in the special funds accounts since 2002 are clear attestations of an opaque public finances in Nigeria where for now, transparency and accountability are rules not adhered to, in anyway by the executive arm of government“, he said.
The Senate however  directed the committee to investigate further on the utilisation and repayment of the Special Funds Accounts and report back to it within four weeks before considering the five recommendations made in the report.
Tribune