How NASS principals are stealing via zonal intervention projects, by IG Wala

There is an alarming situation in the National Assembly that requires national outcry. Zonal intervention project alias constituency project is not by any means a personal project to anyone in any position in the Senate or House of Representative. The projects are not supposed to be implemented or executed by any politician in National Assembly. It is a project or projects designed to be executed by the federal ministries, departments and agencies like any other regular projects being executed across the country by federal MDAs.

But because in 2004, the Obasanjo’s political romance with the National Assembly yielded an outcome of negotiation for what I called political quid pro quo. When Obasanjo was scheming for a 3rd Term, he wanted the lawmakers to use their power to grant his prayer, and the politicians in NAss in return, also demanded to be giving the opportunity to identify projects to be executed within their constituencies an place them within the MDAs. This was how the zonal intervention projects came to be, even though there were measures put in place to curtail abuses and corruption, unfortunately, corruption and abuses have consumed the initiative.

Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were harassed and intimidated during budget defence simply because they were complaining against the abuses, until they finally decided to connive in the diversion of the intervention projects and outrightly stealing in the guise of projects execution. The budget padding saga in National Assembly is powered by the constituency projects execution. If a budget is padded, the proceeds come to the “padder”, be him/her a Senator or Reps member via the MDA during the so called project execution.

It may interest reader to know that by their design, the principal officers of the National Assembly have the largest share of the projects because they are privileged to do the budget padding without anyone questioning. For example, in the days of Yakubu Dogara as a Speaker, he padded or allocated such projects to over N5 billion worth of projects to his tiny constituency, while the largest constituency in his state had a paltry of N300million worth of projects.

Why do you think the likes of Deputy Senate President is dolling out huge amounts of resources and items across his constituency as if he was the richest man in the country before he joins politics or before he became the DSP?

Almost 90% of the monies meant for projects that were unfairly and corruptly smuggled into our national annual budgets using their positions in National Assembly have gone into their personal pockets. This is how they become rich nd powerful overnight as principal officers and their allies.

Therefore, we in the civil society organisations are calling on anti corruption agencies in the country, EFCC and ICPC to wade in urgently to save the country from the huge leakages and theft going on in the National Assembly under the offices of the principal officers and the rest of the Senators and Members. The records of such theft are available under the MDAs and the so called contractors (mostly recruited by the politicians). Finally on this, the office of the SGF has a director who is responsible for monitoring and evaluation of these projects, who also issued certificate of completion as clearance to payment is also an accomplice.

Comrade, IG Wala
03/03/25