Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Bolaji Owasanoye, on Tuesday, said the review of the 2021 budget revealed that 257 projects amounting to N20.138bn were duplicated, IgbereTV reports.
He spoke at the third national summit on Diminishing Corruption in Public Sector, themed ‘Corruption and Cost of Government New Imperatives for Fiscal Transparency’.
He said the commission also uncovered a syndicate of corrupt individuals within the service corruptly employing unsuspecting Nigerians, issuing them fake letters of employment, fraudulently enrolling them on IPPIS and posting them to equally unsuspecting MDAs to commence work.
He said the commission was prosecuting one of the leaders of the syndicate from whose custody led to the retrieval of several fake letters of recommendation purportedly signed by the Chief of Staff to the President, ministers, Federal Civil Service Commission and other high-ranking Nigerians.
He said: “ICPC investigation of some cases of illegal recruitment forwarded to us by Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has so far implicated Ministry of Labour and the University College Hospital Ibadan and a number of corrupt staff of other MDAs at a lower level. This abuse of power is consummated with complicity of compromised elements in IPPIS.”
He presented the winners of the 2021 ICPC Public Service Integrity Awards. They were Muhammad Ahmad of NDLEA and Nelson Okoronkwo of the Ministry of Information and Ikenna Nweke, a Nigerian student in Japan appointed pioneer ICPC Citizen Anti-Corruption Volunteer Group Icon for his exemplary act of integrity of finding and returning intact a wallet containing substantial sums of money despite his impecunious state as a student.
Speaking at the event, President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to sanction heads of MDAs that fraudulently presented new projects as ongoing projects in the budget.
He said those who brought in personnel into the public workforce by illegal recruitment, padded their payroll and retained ghost workers would be sanctioned.
He said his government had noted from the activities of the ICPC that some MDAs had devised the fraudulent practice of presenting new projects as ongoing projects.
