The Commission said the debt burden is one of the major challenges that it is having besides inadequate infrastructure at its headquarters.
The Director-General of the ECN, Eli Bala, stated this while defending the budget of the commission before the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, on Thursday.
He said the money was owed to contractors who executed the constituency projects.
Constituency projects, also known as Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP), are projects nominated by federal lawmakers but executed by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
ZIPs were conceived to ensure equity in allocation of infrastructure in federal constituencies.
Annually, N100 billion is allocated for the execution of the projects. However, questions have been raised regarding the relevance of the ZIPs due to corruption allegations.
In 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari had questioned the constituency projects implementation. During the launch of the Constituency Projects Transparency Group (CPTG) Report Phase One, Mr Buhari said after spending N1 trillion in 10years, there was no impact.
“It is on record that in the past ten years One trillion naira (N1trillion) has been appropriated for constituency projects yet the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians can hardly be seen,” the president said at the time.