From Basil Obasi, Abuja
Further to its resolve towards rooting out corruption in the country, the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government has devoted a total of N31.1billion to anti-corruption agencies and anti-graft crusade in the 2017 budget.
The amount represents a whopping 15 percent increase in the allocation to curb the social vice when compared with the N27.7 billion voted for anti-corruption expenditure in the 2016 .
Reviewing the budget document obtained from the National Assembly, almost all the ministries, departments and agencies of government voted some funds towards the fight against corruption in the 2017 budget.
The core agencies saddled with the responsibility of fighting the menace of corruption include Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC); the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).
Others are the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives (NEITI), Public Complaints Commission, Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
Among these agencies, the EFCC would receive what appears a lion’s share of N17.2 billion, which represents 55 per cent of the N31.1 billion cumulative allocation to anti-graft agencies. The EFCC voted N7.127 billion for personnel cost, N3 billion for overhead and N7.074 billion for capital expenditure.
Also, the review showed the ICPC got about N5.93 billion; N2.73 billion was allocated to the CCB, while CCT got N1.09 billion.
The analysis also showed the 2017 budget for the Bureau of Public Procurement increased by 5 percent from N1.42 billion in 2016 to a total of N1.49 billion for the upcoming fiscal year.
The NEITI budget decreased from N1.4 billion in 2016 to N1.2 billion in the 2017 budget.
The sum total of the budget for core anti-graft agencies amounts to N30.1 billion while the remaining N0.99 billion represents funds earmarked for anti-corruption initiatives across other ministries, departments and agencies of government in the 2017 budget.
For instance, the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing devoted about N18.2 million to support the President’s war against the bad eggs, while the Niger Delta Ministry proposed to spend N22 million to fight the scourge.