By Hugo Odiogor,      Deputy Political Editor
LAGOS — WORRIED by pressure from States on the Federal Government to handle environmental disasters, the Ecological Fund is set to compel states to render account of the funds released to them from the central purse.
Vanguard learnt that the Federal Government is displeased with the ever increasing cases of ecological disasters ravaging states across the country.

Official government sources told Vanguard that states had been profligate in spending the money sourced from the Ecological Funds. In fact, most states spend the money in the same way they spend their security votes.

A source told Vanguard: “They collect money to solve ecological problems in their states but end up using the money to purchase fleet of cars and indulge in other frivolities. Virtually all sections of the country is affected by ecological problems, ranging from coastal erosion in the South-West and South-South, soil and gully erosion in the North and South-East, desert encroachment in the North, as well as oil spill and pollution in the South-South.

All these are meant to be tackled with the five per cent funds set aside from the Federation Account to facilitate intervention and remediation by the Ministry of Environment through the Ecological Funds located in the Presidency.”

Vanguard learnt that states send their requests for intervention to the  Ecological Funds office but when such requests are granted and approved, they divert the funds into other uses that are not even relevant to the socio-economic development of their states.

The source said:  “They use the money to purchase fleet of cars, travel abroad and embezzle it just like the security funds and when there is emergency in their respective states, they run to the Ecological Funds office to ask for intervention.”

Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment, Senator Grace Folashade Bent, said the pressure being put on the Ecological Fund by state governments and other agencies of government created the impression that the Fund was inexhaustible.

Just recently, parts of the northern states were ravaged by floods and coastal erosion, while pollution, through oil spillage, is on the rise in the Niger Delta.

Apart from misuse of the money from the Ecological Fund, Vanguard discovered that some of the claims by states on their reforestation programmes were bogus and fraudulent.

A source told Vanguard: “We have seen situations where some of the states announce with glee that they are embarking on tree planting campaigns for which billions of naira are to be spent but after the pomp and pageantry associated with the ceremonies and the photo opportunities that it offers, the exercise does not go beyond that.”

A former governor in one of the northern states once spent millions of naira to import mango seedlings from Kenya for reforestation programme that would arrest the advancement of the desert but  the seedlings were eventually shared out to government officials who used it to start their private orchids.

In most of these states that claim to have embarked on planting of millions of trees, the source said: “We see idle and unemployed youths whose services in such projects would have offered them temporary jobs.

There are not functional forestry departments to monitor such tree planting programmes. The incidence of care-free logging is high and there are no visible signs of progress at the end of each tree planting season.

“There are no benchmarks to measure the success of the programme. In fact, the whole exercise ends up as a sham and a charade. These are clever ploys by politicians to make money and we must check them closely.”

Threat to socio-economic activities

In the South-East where gully erosion is a major threat to socio-economic activities, Vanguard learnt that politicians and contractors are exacerbating the problem through inflated contracts, round tripping of contract awards and execution of shoddy jobs to create opportunities for re-award of the same contracts.

A source said: “Contract award on gully erosion is hot potatoes for politicians at the federal and state levels. Contracts on the gully erosion problem top the list and you will be surprised by the calibre of politicians that scramble for it.”

Permanent Secretary in the Office of Ecological Funds, Mrs Ibikunle Odusote, told Vanguard in Abuja that “the time has come for us to take politicians on ecological issues. All over the world, issues on the environment and ecology are key political issues.