The ministries had the sum inserted into the 2019 budget for the execution of zonal intervention projects.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission has threatened to investigate the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice over N5.6bn constituency project.
The ministries had the sum inserted into the 2019 budget for the execution of zonal intervention projects.
Chairman of the ICPC, Bolaji Owasanoye, has now queried the anomalies in allocating constituency projects to these ministries.
Spokesperson for the commission, Rasheedat Okoduwa, said Owasanoye at a media roundtable in Abuja revealed that a breakdown of the 2019 allocation for zonal interventional projects showed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would spend N2.9bn on constituency projects.
Owasanoye added that the allocation of N2.7bn to the Ministry of Justice in the same budget brings to the fore some of the anomalies surrounding the implementation of constituency projects across the country.
“What is constituency project doing in Foreign Affairs? We will ask questions with this kind of allocation,” Owasanoye was quoted as saying.
The ICPC boss further revealed that only about 60 per cent of constituency projects have been completed with a lot of them executed in shoddy ways due to poor technical designs, impositions and other sundry irregularities.
He stressed that the commission would not give up on tracking of constituency projects as long as government kept funding them and therefore called on local communities to own the projects for themselves.
Owasanoye also called for the handover of zonal intervention projects to local government authorities upon completion for effective maintenance and sustainability of the projects.
He said, “If somebody had nominated a project and succeeded in getting the project to the community, it is not the duty of the person to maintain it.
"Communities need to understand that it was public funds that was used. They need to take ownership. We recommend that the project needs to be handed over to the local government for the community to take over.”