FG withheld funds for duplicated 2021 projects – Akabueze

Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, says the Federal Government never disbursed funds for duplicated projects that were discovered by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

He stated this on Friday on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, even as he said 54 out of the 295 projects were not duplications but only had description issues.

Chairman of the ICPC, Bolaji Owasanoye, had disclosed that 257 projects amounting to N20.138bn were duplicated in the 2021 budget.

Owosanoye had said the commission tracked 1,083 projects across the country with the exception of Borno and Zamfara states, owing to security challenges.

Akabueze said every project in the budget had a unique identifier, adding that funds were withheld for 185 projects that were indeed duplicated.

“The ICPC came up with a report, which they sent to us about duplicated projects that they found in the budget. We did our own review, we found that 54 of those projects were not actually duplications but they were issues with project descriptions,” he said.

Akabueze also said, “This description made them look the same but they are not the same. Every project in the budget has a unique identifier.

“And which were found to indeed be duplicated, released funding was withheld from such a project. From the list we received from the ICPC, there are only 185 duplicated projects, 54 were not.”