Operatives of Independent Corrupt Practicesandrelated Offences Commission (ICPC) have commenced the tracking of 250 constituency projects in Kwara State.
The commission is in the second phase of its constituency and executive projects tracking exercise in 16 states of the federation.
The team, which had earlier visited the Kwara State secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ilorin to seek the support of the media in carrying out the exercise, explained that they are tracking projects executed between 2015 and 2019 at the total contracts sum of valued at N4.1 billion spread across the three senatorial districts of the state.
Some of the projects inspected during the team’s first outing on Friday included solar street lights along Edun, Isale Aluko, Pakata – Adeta road, Oloje – Alfayaya road, Popo-giwa and Oloje Estate, all sited within Kwara Central Senatorial District.
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Also visited in the same district were constituency public primary school projects in
Oko-erin, Ijoro, Adewole and Anifowose, among others.
Spokesperson of the commission, Rasheedat Okoduwa, “the exercise, which started from June, 23rd involved 16 states- Cross River, Taraba, Ekiti, Ogun, Gombe, Nasarawa, Kebbi, Kwara, Jigawa, Abia, Delta, Ebonyi, Niger, Rivers, Oyo, and Kaduna and focuses on key sectors, including health, education, water resources, agriculture, and power.
The objective of the tracking exercise is to investigate fraudulent procurement practices in the award of contracts and execution of projects; make recoveries on projects or contracts confirmed to have been inflated or in which contractors under-performed or did not perform at all; and track contracting companies for all statutory compliance”.
The commission said it had in 2019 launched the pilot phase of the exercise in which it tracked projects performance from 2015 to 2019 in 12 states. “Successes of the exercise included the recoveries of tractors, ambulances, dialysis machines and other hospital equipment from sponsors of the projects across the pilot states”.
