Boluwatife Ekanem, a mother of three, runs a small shop at Irebami, in Ile-Ife, Osun State. But she had not opened her shop for many months when a PREMIUM TIMES reporter met her in August.
A road that passes through the area had attracted her and many other small retail businesses into the area. But as the road collapsed, patronage gradually dried up for the businesses.
In December 2022, a Facebook post by Abimbola Ajilesoro, a member of the House of Representatives, excited Mrs Ekanem and other traders and residents in the area.
The three-minute video, with a song rendered in Yoruba language playing in the background, captures stages of construction work on the road, beginning from the installation of the drainage earlier that year.
Mr Ajilesoro, who was seeking re-election in the 2023 general election, promised that work on the 1.5-kilometre road would soon be completed and the agony of the residents of the area and other users of the road would end. Mrs Ekanem and many other users of the road praised the lawmaker.
Work abandoned
Unfortunately, work on the road was abandoned at about the time Mr Ajilesoro won the 18 March election. The hope that the construction work once elicited among the people in the community has given way to anger and despair.
“We are not enjoying any benefits from the half-completed road,” Mrs Ekanem said near her shop. The thick layer of dust on the door of the shop tells a graphic story of the hardship faced by the people of Irebami because of the condition of the road.
“It’s not that there are no goods in my shop, but I locked it up because there is no sale because people have stopped using the road. When they see stagnant pools of water on the road, they take alternative routes,” she lamented.
When this reporter visited the community around 11 a.m. on a Monday in September, the majority of the shops were closed. In the few that were open, the goods were covered with clothes to shield them from dust.
As of the time the workers left the site in March, over N163.9 million had been released to two contractors handling the 1.5-kilometre road but the road was yet to be completed.
Puzzling questions
The construction of the Irebami Lane IV road by the federal government is raising many puzzling questions. How did a small road in Ife, which ordinarily ought to be under the care of the local or state government, find its way into the federal budget? Why was the contract for a single 1.5km road split into four and inserted in Nigeria’s budget that way?
PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation revealed how the lawmaker inserted the project into the 2022 Appropriation Act, duplicated the same project as four separate line items and also nominated it into the 2023 Zonal Intervention Project (ZIP). The investigation also showed why two different contractors were working on the project at the same time.
Infrastructure Deficit
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria has a massive infrastructure deficit with a total infrastructure stock of only 30 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP). This is way below the international benchmark of 70 per cent set by the World Bank. With Nigeria’s population growing at a rate of over 2.5 per cent per year and an expected population of 400 million people by 2050, the infrastructure will continue to be overwhelmed.
As a result, politicians dangle the provision of infrastructure as a pie before voters in every election cycle. Even legislators, whose main responsibility does not include the execution of projects, have moved in with the controversial ZIPs to have something to point to as their achievements in their constituencies.
The lawmakers also argue that without the ZIPs, which are inserted into the annual federal government budget, many local communities will have no government presence despite their needs.
Under the ZIP, also known as the Constituency Project Fund for which the National Assembly allocates N100 billion annually, lawmakers nominate projects for execution in their constituencies through the ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government. However, the flawed budgeting process and poor funding of the budgets often leave a trail of abandoned ZIPs across the country, such as the Irebami road rehabilitation project.
Lawmakers are seldom satisfied with the ZIP fund — they also lobby appropriation committees to include other projects in the budget, a practice dubbed “budget padding” by Nigerians.
In the 2022 Appropriations Act as amended, the Irebami Line 4 road was nominated into the budget multiple times. A thorough review of the entire budget showed that the 1.5-kilometre road was nominated four times with little adjustments to the name.
The first one has reference number ERGP202200969 and is titled ‘Construction Of Access Road At Irebami Street/Irebami Line 4, Off Fajuyi Street, Ile-Ife, Osun, State Phase 5. The budget plan for the project was N85 million while the Nigerian Building And Road Research Institute (NBBRI), Lagos, an agency under the Federal Ministry Of Science, Technology And Innovation, is the implementing agency.
In the same 2022 budget, the project was listed as ERGP202201153 and titled Construction Of Access Road At Irebami Street/Irebami Line 4, Off Fajuyi Street, Ile-Ife, Osun, State Phase 1 tagged “New Project.” Again, another N85 million was allocated under the same NBBRI.
Further findings revealed that it was also nominated as ERGP202202109 and titled Construction Of Access Road At Irebami Street/Irebami Line phase 3 with allocation of N25.5 million under the same NBBRI but tagged “ongoing”.
Finally, the road was also nominated as ERGP202203596 and titled; “Construction Of Access Road At Irebami Street/Irebami Line phase 5” with the allocation of N34 million with the tag of “New”.
In all, a total of N229.5 million was allocated for the construction of the road in the 2022 Appropriation Act. About 178 million of that amount had been released by the end of April 2023.
When contacted, the lawmaker justified the insertion and splitting of the same road project into four different projects in Nigeria’s national budget. “I have split all the money in the project around in order to get the road done gradually,” he said.
The choice of NBBRI – a research institute – as the implementing agency raises a red flag because ordinarily, road projects are supposed to be implemented by the Ministry of Works.
Secondly, a review of the 2022 Appropriation Act shows that the National Assembly increased the capital projects component of the budget of the Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation from the N70.3 billion proposed by the executive to N153.4 billion.
NBBRI alone got N76 billion as capital projects in the 2022 budget with most of the projects nominated by members of the National Assembly. Many of the projects are the construction of roads, schools, etc. These are projects lawmakers like to build in their constituency. It is unclear why the lawmakers dumped all these projects in the budget of NBBRI.
Details of released sum from 2022 budget
For the contractor, according to Govspend, a database of all government spending, this paper discovered that the contract for the road was awarded to two contractors; Rubila Nigeria Limited and Archad Project Limited.
According to the document, on 11 March 2023, N49.6 million was paid to Rubila Nigeria Limited by the NBRRI, Lagos for the construction of the road. Again, another N14.1 million was paid for the same project on 18 April 2023. In total, we traced N63.7 million to Rubila Nigeria Limited.
PREMIUM TIMES found another N77.414 million transferred to Archad Project Limited on 22 December 2022 and another N36.9 million on 31 December 2022 under the 2022 Appropriations Act. A sum of N114.3 million was traced to Archad Project Limited.
In all, this reporter traced N178.01 million released for the project under the 2022 Appropriation Act.
Another N74 million allocated in 2023
PREMIUM TIMES also discovered a 2023 ZIP nominated by the lawmaker, with the title: Construction of road and Asphalt laying of selected areas in Ife federal constituency with N74 million budgeted amount. The project was tagged as “new”.
This was awarded to Archad Project Limited, suite D12/D13 J-Plus plaza, Jimmy Carter Street, Area2, Garki Abuja supervised by Ogun Osun River Basin Development Authority, Alabata Road Abeokuta, under the Ministry of Federal Ministry of Water and Resource.
On the surface, this project seems not to be connected to the Irebami Lane 4 road. However, this paper discovered that the title of the project was left vague to deceive the people. Mr Ajilesoro confirmed this during a meeting with him in his office.
“That is why I used it in this line of budget here, ‘the construction of road and asphalt laying of selected roads in Ife federal constituency’ because I don’t want people to know that I am targeting it to the road alone because people would carry the rumour that I am only targeting my town. But in the agency, they know this money was going to the road,” he said during a meeting with a PREMIUM TIMES reporter in his office at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja.
When asked the reason for the delay in the project, Mr Ajilesoro said the total released fund was expended on the construction of the drainage, stating that he was expecting to use the release for the ZIP in 2023 to fund the project. According to him, the federal government has released 50 per cent of the N74 million to the contractor. However, the contractors cannot resume at the site until after the rainy season.
“What remains there is asphalting, I gathered money around to implement the project, the quality of the drainage, eat (sic) all the money, the money finished and (agency) now said for them to continue the project, they cannot put money from their agency to the project, so I split the budget into other projects, for the asphalting of the road,” Mr Ajilesoro said.
“Now they have released 50 per cent of the money but they cannot do it because it cannot do anything, so we wait until the end of October if money will be added to this project in order to cover the road,” he said while dismissing the concerns raised by the people of Irebami.
However, the way and manner the project is being executed appear to meet the definition of budget padding and show a total disregard for the Procurement Act. Through the use of deceptive project titles, the lawmaker was able to nominate the project several times in the same budget.
To avoid public scrutiny, he also used deceptive project titles to deceive his constituents on the location of a project by tagging it “Construction of road and Asphalt laying of selected areas in Ife federal constituency,” whereas the project is in his community.
The use of vague and deceptive project titles is not peculiar to Mr Ajilesoro. The 2022 budget was littered with similar schemes. For instance, there is a N56,390,572 that appeared four times in the budget as “Construction of Boreholes at Various Locations.” It appeared for Lagos, Osun, Ogun and Oyo.
Budget Padding
Padding of budgets with projects is a recurring issue in Nigeria. Often, lawmakers lobby the appropriations committees to insert such projects into the federal budget.
The Chairman of the House Committees on Appropriations in the 8th Assembly, Abdulmummin Jibrin, accused the then Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, of padding the budget with frivolous projects. Mr Jibrin’s accusation became the “budgeting padding scandal.”
Mr Jibrin said the then-speaker colluded with his deputy, Yusuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Doguwa, and Minority Whip Leo Ogor to earmark up to ₦40 billion to themselves in the National Assembly budget.
In 2018, former President Muhammadu Buhari criticised the National Assembly for inputting projects into the budget without proper conceptualisation and approval.
“Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation. Some of the new projects inserted by the National Assembly have not been properly conceptualized, designed and cost and will therefore be difficult to execute,” Mr Buhari had said.
President Bola Tinubu also warned lawmakers against the practice of inserting projects into the budget, adding that projects should be domiciled in relevant MDAs.
“We must ensure that only projects and programmes with equitable benefits are allowed into the 2024 Budget. Additionally, only projects and programmes which are in line with the sectoral mandates of MDAs and which are capable of realizing the vision of our government should be included in the budget,” Mr Tinubu said during the budget presentation.
We need N150 million for Ashphat – Ajilesoro
As things stand, the success of this project may depend on the lawmaker being able to “find the money in the budget.” Mr Ajilesoro told PREMIUM TIMES that the road needs N150 million more.
“We will need almost N150 million to complete the asphalting of the road so we need more than N150 million budget for the road. So I have split all the money in the project around in order to get the road done gradually. That is my agreement with the agency and contractor,” he said.
He also said he could not say when the project would be completed as he was trying to get the funds for the asphalting of the road.
“The money that will complete the asphalting of the road, the contractor will be spending up to N150 million to complete it, so for this we have to wait for the fund,” he concluded.
Duplications are deceitful – Experts
The process of funding the project was criticised by experts who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES. Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa, the acting head of Open Governance and Institutional Partnership of BudgIt, said the budget process adopted by the lawmaker is fraudulent. He said if the proper procurement process had been followed, the bill of quantity submitted by the contractor would have shown how much it cost to construct the road.
“Because you and I would agree that you actually costed the project before you gave the particular amount, so there was a contractor that handled the project and he gave you the bill of quantity and you use that bill of quantity to raise your money. So you can’t tell me that the bill of quantity is not sufficient and you have now decided to raise the money three times, that is a fraud,” Mr Bolarinwa said in a phone interview.
He said his organisation, which focuses on transparency in budgeting and governance, had encountered similar projects that it referred to the anti-graft agencies, the ICPC and EFCC, for investigation.
“So what we do in that case is, when we see things like that, we write and collate all of them, we send them to ICPC for investigation. But you know, it’s not a process that is fast and our laws sometimes can be funny. Sometimes they don’t attend to those petitions on time, sometimes it can take a long time. We have also seen cases where people go back to return some money to the treasury because they know that there is now a lot of attention on them,” he said.
A construction expert, Bhadmus Hamzat, said to install and complete the drainage in a road that is 1.5km long, the contractor will not use up to N30 million. But the lawmaker said the Irebami road drainage consumed beyond N62 million.
Mr Hamzat, a retired staff of the Ministry of Works, said the total cost of the project should have been contained in the Bill of Engineering Measurement (BEME). He said the construction shows that the proper procurement process was not followed, particularly Section 18 of the Public Procurement Act.
“You can never use N30 million to construct a lined drain for a 1.5 km road, not to talk of a road which is not up to that. But only if the contractor also wants to chop (sic) money. According to the federal government specification and using BEME, to determine the cost, only if the contractor wants to gain in excess, then I won’t doubt it, but that is too outrageous,” he said.
PREMIUM TIMES wrote a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Ogun/Osun River Basin Development Authority on the asphalting phase of the project. However, the agency has yet to respond to the FOI request.
While the construction of the road lingers, for the people of Irebami Lane 4 like Mrs Ekanem, the real cost is on their pocket and health. With the dry season fast approaching, they can only hope that the road will get some attention.
Soloko Adojokun, 76, is a chief in the community. He said the construction workers had said the road would be tarred soon. However, the optimism that the Facebook post evoked has given way to despair.
“The road has been in a bad condition for a long time, and we heard that they want to tar it, but we have yet to see them. We are still expecting them to come back to the road,” Mr Adojokun said.
