NDLEA Defends Failure To Renovate Taraba Office Despite N41.3m Allocation

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, on Monday reacted to a public query issued by Tracker NG, a subsidiary of BudgIT Nigeria on its failure to rehabilitate its office complex in Taraba State.

TrackerNG, known to track the implementation of government projects on a community-based level, said the agency failed to rehabilitate the dilapidated building despite the allocation of funds for the project.

The organisation in a terse post via its X account on Monday said, “N41m was allocated to the Rehabilitation of Office Complex, NDLEA, Taraba state in the 2023 FG Budget.

“We tracked and report that this project has not been done. We call on @ndlea_nigeria, the implementing agency, to facilitate the renovation of these offices.”

An hour after TrackerNG shared the post, the NDLEA replied to the agency, asking that conscious steps be taken to fact-check its claims before going public.

“Please note that the budgetary provision of N41,300,000 for the project you referred to under capital project ERGP 27191042 has not been released as of today so the project couldn’t have been done.

“When tracking, kindly check well and put out correct information,” the NDLEA said.

THE WHISTLER gathered that the proposed budget for the rehabilitation of the complex was a part of the 2023 fiscal year appropriation that has yet to be released to the agency.

When contacted for more details, the spokesperson of the agency, Femi Babafemi simply said, “TrackNG could have gone further by contacting the Office of the Accountant General of the Federal or the Ministry of Finance to confirm if funds have been released for the project. That would have saved them from the embarrassment of giving out wrong information.”

TrackerNG was established by BudgIT in July 2014 to address critical issues surrounding social and economic development in Nigeria.

These issues range from the lack of citizens’ inclusion in developmental projects, and an ever-increasing number of abandoned projects to the poor execution of the few projects implemented.

Between August 2022 and 2023, TrackerNG tracked over 2000 projects in 15 states and has tracked 15,859 projects in 7,589 towns across the country within eight years.