UNSPENT FUND: FED. MINISTRIES ON LAST MINUTE SPENDING SPREE TO BEAT YAR’ADUA’s DEADLINE

Nigeria’s president, Umar Musa Yar’Adua may have placed excessive premium on the integrity of the federal ministries, government departmental and agencies to feel secured enough to inform the national assembly of part financing its budget deficit in 2009 through unspent funds taken back from federal ministries, departments and agencies.

FORTUNE&CLASS Weekly discreet investigations in Abuja, have, however, shown that the president and very senior officials in federal government ministries and agencies may be working at cross purposes.

“Even before the coming of the Yar’Adua’s administration, it has been made mandatory during the Obasanjo’s presidency for federal ministries and departmental agencies to rule off their accounts by the 15^th of December.” A source in the federal ministry of finance informed. “The idea is that after the rule off, no expenditure aside salaries and allowances are allowed until the succeeding budgetary allocation are effected.” The finance ministry source added.

This year end account rule off had turned a mere paper directive until the assumption of office of President Yar’Adua who seemed to decide to make capital of the directive he had inherited from the Obasanjo administration, the seriousness of the administration in this regard was orchestrated when the erstwhile ministers in the federal ministry of health were forced to resign and prosecuted in court on account of an alleged N300million unspent fund in 2007.

FORTUNE&CLASS Weekly cross checks in Abuja, however, revealed that the frontal measures taken against the sacked ministers of health might have hardened the resolve of strategically placed civil servants that had become annual beneficiaries of unspent funds already in the kitty of the ministries.

An insider in the federal ministry of information and communication told this magazine last week that the officials in the account and audit units of the ministry have been busy over the last three weeks as they feverishly dish out contracts and supplies notes so as to eat up a large percentage of what is left of the unspent fund.

“The president thinks he can beat us to the game but we are better at it,” the source boasted. “Civil servants are smarter in these matters, is it not about filling out the appropriate vouchers and back dating them where necessary? In fact, we know how to settle the officials from the ministry of finance that usually come to supervise the account rule off.”

Another source, in an aside with this magazine explained that the cornering of unspent fund in federal ministries and parastatals is limited to very senior officials and staff members in the account and audit department. In the light of the seriousness of the present administration and the oversight function of members of the National Assembly, the source confided that these senior officials agree among themselves on a predetermined amount of unspent fund they will return to the government as unspent fund and also find the appropriate way to dispense with the percentage of unspent fund they have decided to corner.

Several civil servants also spoke of the federal government renewed efforts at ensuring accountability in service like directing that henceforth, any civil servant that was to proceed on a conference; seminar or any form of out station official duty would have the conference or seminar fee paid directly to the accounts of the facilitating body. This is contrary to the tradition where participant (s) from the ministry is/are given conference or seminar participating in cash. A curious angle to seminar or conference participation in the traditional sense is that some conference or seminar fees are inflated that after cash payment to the participating civil servant, such would just cream off the difference an pocket it while another may collect the participating fee and out of station allowance and altogether abandon the conference or seminar.

Beside, overnight and out of station allowances are now paid direct to the account of recipient civil servant than collection by cash as part of the new accountability regime.

Some of the civil servants FORTUNE&CLASS Weekly interacted with said these measures have been eroded with the opening of multiple accounts. Asserting the fact that it may be near impossible for the federal government to arrest the trend of frantically spending off unspent fund in a ministry within a short period, Mr. Nathaniel Cole, a forensic accounting expert and anti fraud specialist said that the model of conventional auditing that the government depends on to stop the diversion of unspent fund into private pockets shows that government is not serious about tracking unspent fund:

“I don’t think government is serious about this. It is obvious that the officials that are going to audit the ministries are interested parties so there is no way they can objectively audit the account to ascertain how unspent fund would have been tampered with. What government needs at such time like this is the service of forensic accountants, because, in truth, a certain aspect of civil servants efforts to corner the unspent fund has to do with some criminality in the area of filling vouchers and back dating them. Only forensic accountants can handle such case. For forensic accountant, it is easy to pinpoint the exact culprits in the account manipulation.” Cole said.

FOR THE FIRST TIME…A SOCIALIST IN A STATE HOUSE

Finally, an avowed socialist is in a government house in Nigeria. It has been a long trek for that community that belongs in the ideological bend of the Marxist/Engel political thoughts. The first experience with a publicly declared socialist inclined government was way back in the 1950s when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was Premier of the Western Region. Even as the British colonialists lingered in the background of the nation’s political cadence, Awolowo wrought some of the most astounding welfare programmes that till date, people of south west Nigeria embrace the Awolowo years with the nostalgia of a baby’s yearn for a mother’s breast.

Though years had passed, Awolowo’s political exploits and programmes implementation in government have been passed from one generation to the other, and has continued to generate a yearning for a re-enactment of the Awolowo years. This yearning has become more intense with the growing state of hopelessness of Nigerians, seemingly captured in the vice grip of a generation of political brigands that has raised mediocrity to new standards, celebrating the nation’s state of decay with all imaginable plum. It has become so bad that when a Governor of a State buys a bucket for the state’s house bathroom, a large press conference is called and the drums are rolled out to celebrate the “massive” achievement. It tells how much government provision for the needs of the governed has reduced to the deliquence of tokenism.

The coming of Adams Oshiomole to the government house in Benin Edo State provides a new vista for refreshing expectations. Labour and all its philosophical postulation should be the very antithesis of the free wheeling politics of the area boys in Nigeria. The Nigerian state is even more unfortunate because the politicians that straddle the landscape have no idea of what ideological governance must of necessity be administered. The consequence for the country has been the wholesale violence of misdirection that has seized the political environment.

This is just by the way. The truth of the matter is that Oshiomole former labour leader and unarguably, a respected radical now sits in government house, and already, we are getting a feel of the flurry of progressive activities that will characterize political administration of Edo State in the next four years. Immediately after he was sworn-in, the governor declared free education as a state policy in Edo State. It’s a policy that always sits well with the people, south of Nigeria. It was hailed.

Then the governor reeled out other banishments; the banning of illegal taxes at all motor parks within the State and a hint of probing the administration of his immediate predecessor, Prof. Osunbor. It’s just all right the governor has moved the State to the action mode, even, when he was yet to see a single file in the State House.

I dare to call for a slow down, at least in the first few weeks of the administration. Many well intentioned programmes and ideas have failed on the implementation scale, most often, because they lacked well thought out processes. I believe that government policies must be well researched on the template administrative briefing by appropriate officers of state administration. Even if there is a primordial suspicion of civil servants, consultation with them and other stakeholders in governance is important.

While not questioning the competence of Comrade Oshiomole, of course, he had shown sterling qualities with his leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress, I still think governance is different from politicking. It is even more important for the Comrade-Governor to conduct a minimum one week review of the state of situation in Edo State before rolling out his programmes implementation direction. This is against the background of the deplorable state of infrastructure and morale Edo State had degenerated into in the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors.

Generally, Comrade Oshiomole’s coming is a good thing for all that bid good for Nigeria, at the minimum, there is a now a basis to compare labour with the band of degenerates that had for long assailed our sensibilities.