Nigeria News
EFCC To Investigate Social Investments Programme Fraud
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been summoned to investigate an alleged fraud in the Social Investments Programme (SIP).
This comes on the heel of the Federa;l Governments statement that just about 15 percent of the N1 trillion budgeted for the scheme in two years, has been disbursed.
The alleged fraud was made known by the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments Programme, Mrs. Maryam Uwais, during a briefing of the State House Correspondents on her presentation to the National Economics Council (NEC) meeting headed by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, at the Presidential Villa.
Speaking on Thursday, Uwais said 7,812,201 Nigerians are direct beneficiaries of the programme which includes home-grown school feeding programme, conditional cash transfer, N-Power, whereas, secondary beneficiaries, which comprises largely farmers and cooks, are approximately 1,500,000.
She added that the total actual expenditure on SIP in 2016 and 2017 was just 15.58 percent of the budget.
This indicates that about N500 billion had been budgeted for each of the two years, meaning that only N158 billion had been isbursed and spent.
Uwais further explained that the challenges faced bother on corrupt practices in the states, including short-changing, racketeering and harassment of beneficiaries; abuse of the vulnerable, due to poor literacy levels, as well as inadequate awareness/publicity and logistics for monitoring the programme.
She however, stated that SIP is partnering with various organisations within and outside government, to tackle the challenges, while noting that participating state governments are expected to ssist in fraud detection and prevention by their local officials; loan recovery from beneficiaries as well as mobilisation and facilitating the generation of BVN and the opening of accounts.
Speaking on why EFCC was called upon, Uwais said some officials siphoned money to illegal bank accounts, hence the anti-graft agency is required to arrest and prosecute the officials, some of whom have been suspended or sacked.
