Recently, the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating the utilisation of Ecological Funds and other intervention funds of the Great Green Wall Project sent shockwaves across the country when it revealed that the National Agency for Great Green Wall (NAGGW) had spent N81bn to plant 21 million trees in 11 states, namely Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Yobe and Borno. Director-General of the NAGGW, Yusuf Maina Bukar, told the committee that the agency also expended the sum of N697.71m on the renovation of office accommodation and N11.28bn on capital projects, indicating that the main funding of the agency was from 15 percent of the Ecological Funds and the federal allocation as well as other sources. However, speaking during the investigative hearing, the lawmakers queried some of the expenditure made during the period under review, expressing displeasure with the conflicting financial reports submitted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (oAGF) and the agency.

While a six-page document dated August 22, 2023 submitted by the CBN showed that N9,465,960,382.57 was domiciled in the agency’s account from 2015 to date, the Accountant-General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, who was represented at the hearing by a Deputy Director, Irene Nwangwu, said it had received a total of N19,377,726,506.95 from the Derivation & Ecology Accounts from February 2019 to date. In addition, the agency also received N11.023bn as capital expenditure through the oAGF. Nwangwu said former President Muhammadu Buhari approved the release of N2.309bn to the agency as 2020 statutory 5 percent Ecological Fund. However, members of the committee complained that there was little or nothing to show for the agency’s huge expenditure. According to the chairman of the committee, Isma’ila Haruna Dabo, the agency deviated from its core mandate. Dabo said: “Projects such as the Great Green Wall under investigation here were designed primarily to address some issues. The persistence of these challenges despite the funds put into the programme from both the Federal Government and international partners has necessitated this investigation. In recent years, we have witnessed a significant upsurge in natural environmental challenges such as land degradation, deforestation, desertification and drought, which most times are explained away with the context of climate change”.

To be sure, we are not, and cannot possibly be, against the planting of trees, knowing the vital roles they play in enhancing vegetation cover, as economic items, and in sustaining the environment and indeed life itself. However, the expenditure itemised by the NAGGW looks fishy. What varieties of seed were planted and why did they cost so much? Was the expenditure really in line with budgetary provisions? Were the varieties of seed planted exotic and were professionals hired from abroad to plant them? If so, where were they imported from? The NAGGW’s expenditure should invite queries, if not consternation, as to what exactly it was doing with such a humongous amount of money performing the simple task of planting trees. Truth be told, for billions of naira to have been expended on such an exercise, the expectation would be that the agency had invested in planting gold-crusted trees. In any case, it is instructive that the House of Reps’ investigative committee that unearthed this bloated expenditure also found that there were discrepancies in the records of returns submitted by the CBN, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (oAGF) and the agency itself with respect to the expenditure.

We believe that there is a compelling need for a thorough investigation into the expenditure in order to expose any anomalies and infractions that may have been involved, even as those implicated in such crimes, if discovered and confirmed, should be made to face the full wrath of the law. We urge the Green Chamber to go beyond identifying this humongous expenditure and deconstruct how it was made. Nigerians deserve concrete explanations on why the planting of trees had to consume so much money. In addition, if, as the committee indicated, the NAGGW went beyond its brief, a thorough investigation of the factors that accounted for this deviation is called for, especially because it is the long-suffering Nigerians that bear the brunt of such governance misadventures in the long run, and such a situation cannot be allowed to continue to recur. Nigerians will be counting on the investigative committee to do a thorough job in getting to the root of this likely untoward expenditure and the unwarranted mandate extension.

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