…as the year draws to an end
… how civil servants enrich their pockets this period
By Emman Ovuakporie
It has become almost a norm as Federal Civil Servants rush to clear their accounts to beat the 31st December deadline to return all unspent budget monies to the Consolidated Revenue Account, CRA.
TNG in its usual style of digging deep discovered that at this period of the year civil servants work tirelessly to clear whatever is left in their accounts to ensure that such unspent monies are not returned.
A visit by TNG to most ministries last Friday showed that there was a beehive of activities in most of the MDAs particularly the Ministry of Health and Foreign Affairs.
A further check revealed that it’s an annual ritual because all tables must be cleared particularly the accounts to beat the December 31st deadline.
Some of the civil servants who spoke to TNG under the condition of anonymity described the rush as a normal thing that must be accomplished on a yearly basis.
One of the civil servants revealed that”this is the period we clear our tables to make sure the money we couldn’t spend within the budget cycle is returned to CRA.
“But the truth is that our top officials clear alot of this money into their pockets and make sure contractors that were not paid get paid before the end of the year.
Another Civil Servant who works in the ministry of health said”some of these emergency contracts are bogus and some are never executed but the contractors get paid all the same.
“You know that by 2020 the January-December budget cycle will come on stream again and there’s need to streamline things to fit into the cycle.
Recall that in 2017, N118billion capital vote budget money unspent was returned to the CRA by MDAs.
The return of unspent budget money really came to fore during the Late Umaru Yar’dua administration in 2008 when the House of Representatives directed that N2.1bn should be returned to the CRA.
It has become a yearly ritual but most civil servants in powerful positions capitalise on this ritual to enrich their pockets.
The return of such monies is the direct outcome of the return to the envelope system of allocation to MDAs, (bulk allocation to MDAs, instead of project-specific releases)adopted in the first two years of the current President Muhamnadu Buhari administration.
There is no guarantee that MDAs that return money to the coffers of the government are entitled to receive the same amount of money the following year, in addition to what was budgeted for that particular agency,”.