THE Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, recently inaugurated the Presidential Project Assessment Com-mittee (PPAC) headed by Ibrahim Bunu, a former Minister of the FCT. The Committee is set up to assess and provide essential information on the status of on-going Federal Government projects across the country with a three-month completion time. The PPAC will monitor the multi-billion naira projects being executed by some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government. The affected MDAs include the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as well as the Office of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

THESE MDAs are among the most important revenue and cost centres, where huge money running into billions of naira has allegedly been spent on questionable projects and programmes; as well as on doubtful subsidy payments. The Acting President in setting up the committee was reported to be concerned about the level of unexecuted projects since the inception of the Yar’Adua administration. Some Ministers were also alleged to have taken advantage of the ill health of the President to commit all manner of fraudulent acts regarding contract awards and execution.

AMONG the specific projects that the project assessment committee will investigate are: the over N10 billion Silos Projects sited in Abuja, Katsina and Uyo; N30 billion Dam Projects sited in Katsina and Ekiti states and several irrigation projects. The committee will also assess the over N600 billion subsidies claimed to have been spent on petroleum importers in the past one year alone.

WE welcome the setting up of this investigative panel. Projects in Nigeria are claimed to be several times higher than the cost of similar projects in other parts of the world or even those executed by individual businessmen. This is due essentially to the high rate of corruption in the country. This important  step taken by the acting president in setting up the monitoring committee will send a strong message down the chains of command that it is no longer the old way of doing things, and that government will no longer tolerate corruption, waste and gross inefficiencies.

THE experience over the years is that huge sums of money are voted in the annual budgets to finance projects across the country designed to improve the standard of living of the people. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) also repeatedly approves billions of naira at each of its weekly meetings on various projects across the country. However, most of these projects ended up either not executed, abandoned or in some cases, poorly executed. The end result is that Nigerians hardly feel the impact of such projects for which billions of naira are claimed to have been spent. Nigerians continued to wallow in abject poverty, while politicians both elected and appointed and their collaborators and fronts in the private sector fleece the country and live in wanton splendour and obscene wealth.

THE report of the PPAC should not go the way of similar committees in the past. In the past, some probe panels were set up with fanfare and conducted their sittings in the full glare of the cameras. However, the reports of those committees never saw the light of day. This should not be the fate of the present panel. Nigerians are interested in the outcome of the Committee’s report and the implemen-tation of its recommendations. It is time for a clean break with the past in the way Nigeria as a nation treats perpetrators of corruption, wastes and inefficiencies.

Comments (2)

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probe panel
written by ola makoyi, March 15, 2010

outcome depends on how impecable the panel members are and how honest the ag president is in establishing probity in governance.The ball is in Jona's court.

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whats next?
written by Goodluck DC.A, March 16, 2010

After probing whats next? Will there be any prosecution on defaulters. Because this was the same probe panels set up by Former President Obasanjo and nothing reasonable came out of it. Nigerians need to know how our tax payers money are spent.

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