The House of Representatives, has put the Director General of the Great Green Wall (GGW), Yusuf Bukar to task on how the agency expended proceeds from the Ecological Fund, vowing to expose corruption practices in the agency.
An Ad-hoc committee of the House on Tuesday engaged the DG, who could not satisfactorily provide answers to questions in the management of funds accruing to the agency, and its seeming deviation from its original mandate.
Speaker of the House, Hon. Tajudeen Abass, had while declaring an investigative hearing on the Utilisation of Ecological Funds Released to the Great Green Wall by the committee open, noted that the hearing was coming at a time of heightened public expectations, given the experiences with the management of public funds by agencies of government in recent times, which was threatening the development of the nation.
Abbas who was represented by Hon. Dickson Takhir said: “The objectives of this investigative hearing are: gather data to ensure the programme is optimally implemented, identify challenges affecting the execution of the project, to expose corruption, and guide the new administration in the continued implementation of this policy which is crucial to both the well-being and the security of our nation.
“Furthermore, expenditures of public funds and ensuring such expenditures are in line with this hearing fulfills the parliamentary responsibility to set down rules and of public interest and annual budgetary provisions, not forgetting donations from both domestic and international donor agencies from the ecological fund office for the GGW projects.”
Earlier, the Ad-hoc Committee Chairman, Hon. Isma’ila Dabo, said that in recent years, the country has witnessed a significant upsurge in natural environmental challenges such as land degradation, deforestation, desertification and drought, adding that projects such as the GGW under investigation were designed primarily to address some of these issues.
