The House of Representatives has begun its investigation into the alleged mismanagement of over N447.6bn COVID-19 intervention fund from 2020 to 2022.
The lawmakers has summoned 83 ministries, departments, and agencies of the Federal Government to aid its investigations
The House invited the Ministries of Agriculture and Food Security, Communications and Digital Economy, Federal Road Maintenance Agency, and scores of other Ministries, Department and Agencies.
The MDAs are to appear before the lawmakers to answer questions on alleged mismanagement of COVID-19 intervention funds distributed among them to fight the global health pandemic.
In an invitation issued by the Chairman of the Committee and a member representing Ede North/Ede South Federal Constituency, Osun State, Bamidele Salam, dated November 20, 2023, the lawmakers asked each of the MDAs to be represented by their “Chief Accounting Officers, Head of Finance, Head of Procurement and any other relevant officer to defend the expenditure contained in their various submissions.”
The Salam-led committee will also play host to the Federal Medical Centre, Jaligo, Taraba State; Brini Kudu, Jigawa State; Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Azare, Bauchi State, Ebute-Metta, Lagos State, Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Enugu among, others on November 30, 2023.
On December 1, the Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Kware, Sokoto State; Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital, Yaba Lagos State; and the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital Abeokuta, Ogun State; will take their turns before the committee.
The COVID-19 Intervention Programmes 2020 Appropriation Act (Amendment) captured only 22 MDAs out of the 83 that were invited for the probe. Findings showed that among the 22 MDAs captured in the document, all teaching hospitals got N86bn as an intervention in 2020, making it the highest appropriation.
It was followed by the Ministry of Trade and Investment with N75bn, while the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency came next with N60bn.
The Ministry of Agriculture got N56.46bn, National Directorate of Employment, N52bn; Ministry of Aviation, N5bn; Ministry Of Health, N23.64bn; NAFDAC, N2bn; NCDC, N2bn; NIPRD, N2bn; and NIMR, N1bn.
The NSCDC received N539,67m; Mines and Steel, N6bn; Ministry of Water Resources, N9.89bn; Rural Electrification Agency, N12.4bn; Ministry of Finance, N36bn; and Correctional Services, N951.14m.
The Federal Fire Service got N1.48bn; Refugees Commission, N2.5bn; Air Force, N2.7bn; Nigeria Police, N10bn and Humanitarian ministry, N32,46bn.
Checks in the budgets of the MDAs showed that at least 22 of them got not less than N447.6bn as COVID-19 funds in 2020 alone.
This implies that the COVID-19 intervention fund from 2020 to 2022 was way higher than the N447.6bn received by less than half the number of MDAs invited by the House of Representatives for the probe slated to begin from November 27, 2023, and end on December 4.
It was observed that the COVID-19 intervention funds were given to the ministries despite the huge budgetary allocations that some of them received over time.
For instance, the ministries of humanitarian affairs and women’s affairs got a budget of about N386.5bn between 2019 and 2023.
The appropriations for the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 were N5.56bn, N8,19bn, N7.29bn, N33.58bn and N17.18bn respectively.
For the humanitarian ministry, its appropriations in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 were N62.8bn, N7.29bn, N35.6bn, and 208.94bn respectively.
