MDAs use IT projects to siphon funds, NITDA tells EFCC

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has said some government ministries and agencies embark on bogus Information Technology (IT) projects to siphon government funds.

A statement from NITDA, yesterday, said the agency’s Director General, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, disclosed this when the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and his team visited the IT agency’s headquarters on Tuesday in Abuja.

NITDA’s spokesperson, Hadiza Umar, who signed the statement, quoted Dr Pantami as saying fraudulent officials hid under the complex nature of IT to perpetrate fraud.

“Some MDAs repeatedly engage in IT projects with no provision for their sustainability afterward. Information Technology (IT) is one of the areas which have been used to siphon government funds simply because of its complexity,” he said.

The DG said NITDA which is the IT regulatory body in the country has been made a clearing house for all IT projects and infrastructural development in the country by the constitution.

The agency, he said, has the expertise to analyse any IT project critically to know its authenticity before asking an agency to either embark on such project or not.

This way, he said, corruption would be reduced and huge funds would be saved for the government, adding that the EFCC should support the agency to enable it enforce the IT clearance law.

In his remarks, the Acting Chairman of EFCC Ibrahim Magu said the two government organisations have a lot in common, and more needed to be learned from each other.