The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) says it has recovered N7.5 million unused grants from 11 lecturers of the Kaduna Polytechnic.
Spokesperson of the commission, Mrs Rasheedat Okoduwa, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.
Okoduwa said the money was part of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) grant released to the school between 2010 and 2017 for staff capacity development through local and international trainings.
“ICPC, through its North West Zonal office, which coordinated the investigation on the utilisation of TETFund grants in the institution, found that the 11 lecturers failed to attend the trainings despite having received monies.
“The trainings were scheduled to hold in Nigeria and three other countries, including the United States of America, Greece and the United Arab Emirates.
“Some of the lecturers collected as much as N1.39 million while others collected between N149,000 and N1.33 million under the Academic Staff Training and Development Project,” she said.
According to her, the Acting Chairman of the commission, Mr Musa Abubakar, handed over the recovered funds to the bursar of the institution, Mr Garba Nabayi.
Okoduwa quoted Abubakar as saying that ICPC would ensure tertiary institutions in the country stopped the misuse of TETFund and other grants.
The ICPC boss stated that the investigation of the utilisation of TETFund grants was being carried out in 27 other tertiary institutions in the North-West geopolitical zone of the country.
This, he said, was to make sure that all grants were properly utilised, and that those found wanting of misuse of the grant would be prosecuted.
“Carting away public funds is one of the things ICPC is fighting.
“Non-utilisation of fund given to lecturers is a crime and lecturers as role models, are to show good behavioural conduct to their students.
“Beneficiaries of such grants must ensure they go for the training because ICPC will not only recover such funds but will prosecute anybody found culpable,” Abubakar said.
He noted that the exercise would spread to institutions in other geo-political zones in the course of time.
Nabayi, who received 11 bank drafts for each defaulting lecturer on behalf of the institution, commended ICPC for the prompt intervention that led to the recovery of the money.
He asked the commission to spread its investigation to other activities of tertiary institutions, especially the execution of capital projects.
