The National Agency for the Great Green Wall is said to have allegedly spent a staggering N81.2 billion on the planting of 21 million trees across 11 frontline states, according to records found by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
According to The PUNCH, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Yobe, and Borno are the states in question.
The lawmakers raised concerns about the conflicting financial reports provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, and the Agency during the investigative hearing into the “Utilisation of ecological funds released to National Great Green Wall from 2015 to date.” They also questioned some of the expenditures made during the period under consideration.
After carefully reading the documents provided to the Ad-hoc Committee, the lawmakers who spoke claimed that N11.28 billion was spent on capital projects, N11.28 billion was spent on claiming ownership of some projects carried out by lawmakers under the Constituency Project as its project, and three States were excluded from the tree-planting exercise.
The legislators also raised questions over the justification for Wareho’s utilisation of multi-billion naira money in the Agency’s account over a prolonged period without returning these unutilized funds to the government’s treasury in accordance with existing financial regulations.
They expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the Agency has not conducted any financial audits since its establishment. They also expressed concern about the significant amount of money allocated to capacity building and other expenses that are not aligned with the Agency’s stated goals as outlined in the Act.
Concerned about the Agency’s lack of evidence to support the majority of the tree planting initiatives implemented thus far, the legislators, based on their individual investigations, contended that 80 percent of the trees planted by the Agency did not successfully thrive.
