The recovered vehicle allegedly diverted by Lawmaker representing Nasarawa Federal Constituency, Kano State by operatives of ICPC.
In 2021, a few months after she joined BudgIT, a civic technology organisation, Mercy Danjuma was able to expose an empowerment scam perpetrated by some lawmakers in Nigeria’s National Assembly.
Her work, which started by sifting through the 2020 budget presented to the National Assembly, climaxed with an expose of how a federal lawmaker allegedly diverted a Toyota Hilux, motorcycle, grinding machines meant for his constituents for personal use.
These items were empowerment projects recovered by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) in Kano state, North West Nigeria.
Details from the 2020 budget showed that the vehicle was sponsored by a lawmaker representing Nasarawa federal Constituency in the name of constituency projects for the use of his community but discovered to have allegedly converted it to his personal use.
Working with ICPC, Mercy was able to expose some of the empowerment projects which were allegedly diverted by some lawmakers from Benue, Abia and Sokoto States.
The ICPC said it has been able to recover N2.8bn worth of assets diverted or embezzled through constituency projects following the tracking of the projects in various states and the FCT between 2019 and 2021.
Working with Tracka, the commission tracked 2,444 projects between 2019 and 2021.
About 524 projects were tracked across 12 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, in the Phase I of the tracking exercise in 2019.
Under the Phase II of the tracking, 822 projects were tracked in 16 states in 2020, and under Phase III of CEPTI, 1,098 projects were tracked in 17 states and the FCT in 2021.
“These recoveries were products of hard work done by Tracka under Mercy’s leadership powered by digital technology. In fact her work pointed the ICPC in the right direction,” Executive Director, Connected Development, Hamzat Lawal said.
“Since she assumed work at BudgIT, Mercy has championed transparency in government projects and enthroned accountability in constituency projects. Her discoveries has been very helpful in curbing corruption in constituency projects,” Lawal added.
Background
The constituency projects concept officially known as the Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPs), was introduced in 2000 to federal lawmakers – senators and members of the House of Representatives – the opportunity of nominating projects considered to be of paramount importance to their constituents.
According to reports, an estimated N2 trillion has been budgeted for the ZIPs since inception in 2000.
Annually, the Federal Government releases N100bn to federal lawmakers for constituency projects.
But despite the huge yearly allocations, citizens continue to lament shoddy completion, non-completion or outright non-existence of these projects in their locale.
In some instances lawmakers allegedly “manipulatively awarded” contracts for the execution of some constituency projects nominated by them to companies in which they, their family members or associates had “substantial interest directly or indirectly.”
“This is why the work of Mercy Danjuma at Tracka is so important because through Tracka – which is a technology platform by BudgIT – citizens can engage their lawmakers and even report them to anti-graft agencies where they feel projects have been poorly executed,” Executive Chairman, Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, Mr. Debo Adeniran, said.
Speaking with our correspondent, Mercy said: “We have once again shown that with digital technology, we can enthrone accountability in governance and ensure that elected representatives are held accountable.
“We need citizens to take ownership of Tracka which is a digital platform that we use to expose corruption in the system.”
