Daily Trust Editorial:
The latest revelations on the abuse of constituency projects have exposed, in painful detail, how Nigeria’s budgeting process has been turned into a bazaar where public institutions are stripped of their mandates and transformed into conduits for political patronage. It is a system that has held governance hostage, crippled Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), distorted national priorities and betrayed the very citizens in whose name these projects are supposedly executed.
What emerges from the 2026 Appropriation Act is not merely a case of poor budgeting. It is a systematic assault on public administration. Agencies established by law for specific responsibilities are being compelled to abandon those responsibilities to execute projects inserted by legislators for their constituencies. The result is that institutions are increasingly becoming weaker, national planning is collapsing, and development is suffering.
Nothing illustrates this absurdity more than the spectacle of agencies whose mandates have absolutely nothing to do with roads, solar installations, or boreholes suddenly becoming contractors for such projects. It makes no sense whatsoever for a space research agency to procure sewing machines or build health facilities, or for a conflict resolution institute to distribute fertiliser and motorcycles. This is organised budgetary vandalism.
A few of the figures uncovered by Daily Trust are staggering. Sixteen federal agencies received more than N205.96 billion for projects completely outside their statutory mandates.
In the budget of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), for example, the legislators earmarked N17.78 billion, an astonishing 91.98 per cent of its entire N19.34 billion, for solar streetlights, fertiliser distribution, motorcycles and classroom construction. In the budget of the Nigeria Press Council, the legislators allocated N10.40 billion out of N11.89 billion, representing 87.47 per cent, to roads, electricity, school renovations, and motorcycles instead of strengthening media regulation and press freedom.
Even more disturbing is the National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike, where the legislators set aside N59.12 billion from its N71.03 billion budget for roads, bridges, solar projects, and health infrastructure. A research institute devoted to improving root crop production is being turned into a construction company. What a shameful act!
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was allocated N12.74 billion, almost 72 per cent of its budget to classrooms, hospitals, roads, markets, and motorcycles. The Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority got N32.10 billion for dams, schools, police stations, constituency generators, and roads. The Centre for Management Development, whose core responsibility is management training and capacity development, earmarked N12.56 billion for roads, bridges, stadium renovation, and solar electrification.
How can institutions perform when their budgets are hijacked for purposes never contemplated by the laws establishing them?
Perhaps the greatest victim is the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education. Created to confront one of Nigeria’s gravest educational challenges, the commission has effectively been robbed of its reason for existence.
Instead of concentrating resources on reducing the country’s millions of out-of-school children, the commission was compelled to allocate about N8.4 billion of its budget to road construction in Ogun, Katsina, and Ekiti states. Even more shocking, a former senator admitted that barely over N1 billion of the commission’s more than N22 billion appropriation was actually available for its genuine statutory functions because legislators had simply domiciled their constituency projects there. This amounts to daylight robbery.
By diverting well over 90 per cent of the commission’s resources to unrelated projects, lawmakers have effectively cheated millions of vulnerable Nigerian children of the educational intervention Parliament itself created the commission to provide.
The tragedy did not begin today. Soon after the return to democratic rule in 1999, constituency projects gradually evolved from modest interventions into one of the most abused features of Nigeria’s budgeting process. Successive administrations tolerated the practice.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo captured the situation aptly when he described the practice as “daylight robbery.” He was right.
Legislators insist they do not control implementation once projects are inserted into agency budgets. That claim strains credibility. Their own colleagues have admitted that lawmakers choose the agencies, negotiate with officials beforehand, and monitor implementation afterwards. Some even acknowledged that the size of a lawmaker’s constituency projects depends largely on his influence within the National Assembly.
Legislators are elected to make laws, appropriate funds and oversee implementation. They are not elected to determine which agency builds roads in which village, where solar lights should be installed or which contractor should execute projects. Once lawmakers begin deciding implementation details, they usurp executive functions and destroy institutional accountability.
The consequences are everywhere. Agencies abandon planning. Budgets become meaningless. National priorities are replaced by political convenience. Education suffers because education agencies cannot focus on education. Agriculture suffers because agricultural institutions become road contractors. Health suffers because health allocations are diluted.
This explains why Nigeria’s budgets increasingly bear little relationship to economic growth or national development. A budget is supposed to reflect careful planning, policy priorities, and measurable outcomes. Instead, it has become an annual sharing formula driven by political influence rather than developmental necessity.
President Bola Tinubu’s administration cannot escape responsibility. Although lawmakers are the principal drivers of this distortion, the executive has allowed the practice to flourish. Agencies willing to resist these insertions appear to be exceptions rather than the rule. Unfortunately, heads of many agencies have chosen accommodation of infamy over institutional integrity.
The President must restore discipline to the budgeting process.
Government should undertake a comprehensive review of the numerous obscure commissions and agencies that have become convenient warehouses for constituency projects. Those that have outlived their usefulness should be scrapped instead of serving as vehicles for budget manipulation.
History will not be kind to those who have reduced the country’s appropriation process to a marketplace of personal interests. Nations that once looked up to Nigeria have overtaken it because they plan, prioritise, and allow institutions to perform the functions for which they were created.
Legislators must give the country a break, abandon this fraudulent distortion of constituency projects, and return to their constitutional mandate.
