Constituency Projects: Open Treasury records contradict the Appropriation Acts for years

Payments for federal constituency projects from 2018 to 2021, published on the open treasury portal, do not match what was budgeted in the Appropriation Acts for those years, Dataphyte investigations have shown.

The government now publishes on the Open Treasury Portal (OTP) all payments by its agencies when they award contracts higher than N5 million, with a detailed description of each payment and payee.

According to the budget appropriation documents published by the Ministry of Finance, the amount approved for constituency projects, also referred to as zonal intervention projects (ZIP),   since 2015 have remained N100 billion annually. 

However, the budget amounts for the constituency projects on the Open Treasury Portal’s budget performance data for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were different from that in the actual budget documents published by the Budget Office.

For each of the four years, the Open Treasury payment portal recorded higher figures as the budget amount for ZIPs. For instance, the OTP quoted N300 billion as the budgeted amount for ZIP in 2018. Compared with the budget appropriation, the amount is N200 billion more than what was approved by both the legislative and executive arm. 

As shown in the image above, all calculations on the budget performance were done using the N300 billion budget in 2018 rather than the N100 billion that was budgeted and approved by the Budget Office.

Similarly, the OTP quoted N303.79 billion as the budget amount for 2019’s zonal intervention projects. This amount is also N203.79 billion higher than the approved amount published by the Budget Office for that year.

The 2020 fiscal year was no exception as the OTP portal reported N103.2 billion as the total budget amount for ZIP for that year. However, the amount from the Budget Office still remained unchanged at N100 billion for the year.

Likewise, the amount budgeted in 2021 was N199.77 billion. This figure too exceeds the approved N100 billion by the National Assembly. Yet, the 0.01% budget performance for the 2021 zonal intervention projects was calculated based on this questionable figure..

What is responsible for these conflicting figures?

Had the Budget office released more than N100 billion in any of the years, this would be a violation of the Appropriation act and the Fiscal Responsibility act. 

Several phone calls to the service desk failed as the line was switched off. Also, the service desk contact given on the website of the Open Treasury Portal did not reply to the emails sent to its account, seeking clarification of these accountability issues. 

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Henshaw Ogubike, abruptly ended the call when our reporter identified himself, reaching out for clarification on these contradictions. 

When another call got through to him, he said he was far from the GIFMIS service desk and cannot provide any information on the discrepancies. He requested further emails be sent to the same service desk which provided no response.

Speaking with Samuel Atiku, he attributes these disparities to two possible reasons. First is the issue of the accounting system used in the country. The accounting system used for the budget is different from that used for reporting. Thus the information from the Accountant General’s office is always different from that in the budget office.

He further explained that Nigeria operates two budget types – one is direct from the offices of the MDAs, and the other, the stand-alone expenditure. The constituency projects fall under the latter which accounts for the gap between what is allocated and what is reported. This is due to the fact that there exist constituency projects in the various MDAs budget.

Secondly, the OTP reports all budgets categorised as a constituency or zonal projects in all MDAs budget, apart from the constant annual N100 billion. 

Atiku however raised a fundamental concern, stating that the members of the National Assembly (NASS) have not been sincere to Nigerians. As the constituency projects are way more than N100 billion. This is because members of the NASS input constituency projects into the ministries for which they are supervising, apart from that contained in the 100 billion budget.

He, therefore, says for efficiency, the accounting system needs harmonisation. This can be done by aligning the process from budgeting to procurement to reporting and to audit with a clear connecting line. 

Unfortunately, he pointed out that this is not the case with Nigeria due to the different accounting systems used. This has an effect on the transparency and accountability of public funds. This situation further raises doubts about the effectiveness of oversight on government spendings.