Lawmakers’ insertion of N6.93trn in 2025 budget is immoral

The insertion of N6.93 trillion in the 2025 budget for 11,122 purported projects for National Assembly members was concealed from the public until a recent scrutiny of the approved budget by a civil society organisation, BudgIT.

The 18-page report exposed the connivance between the Executive and Legislature that saw to the insertion of numerous projects whose total values superseded the individual sectorial budgetary allocations to security, health and education.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his speech, claimed that the 2025 budget was for “securing peace” and “rebuilding prosperity.” The allocation to the security sector was N4.39 trillion, education, N2.48 trillion and health, N3.52 trillion. It follows that the N6.93 trillion allocated for National Assembly members’ interest is more than the votes for health and education for instance, and it is almost N2.5 trillion more than the capital project vote for the country’s security agencies.

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Unlike in the past dispensations when the Executive resisted padding of annual budgets, this government acquiesced to these excessive resource allocations for members of the National Assembly. The bazaar nature of the allocation became evidence in the data that shows that some of the so-called projects for which billions of naira had been allocated had no descriptions. For many that were clearly described, they are to be executed by ministries, departments and agencies that do not have the mandate or capacity to carry out or supervise such projects. For instance, the National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation in Ilorin is to execute the “construction and equipping of 700 capacity ICT/CBT centre in Zonkwa, Kaduna South senatorial district.”

By no stretch of imagination is ICT/CBT centre the core mandate of an agricultural mechanisation institution located in Kwara State. This same institution is billed to execute “Community Health Insurance in Bayelsa West senatorial district” in the South-South. The agricultural mechanisation institution is further meant to provide “security vehicles to some selected areas to enhance security patrol in farming communities in South-East states.”

Why is this project not captured under the capital projects of the Nigeria Police Force? Why is an institution domiciled in the North-Central providing security vehicles to unidentified ‘farming communities’ in the South-East?

Similar projects that are incongruent with the mandates of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are planted in the budgets for the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, Enugu State; National Building and Road Research Institute, Lagos; Federal College of Horticulture, Dadin-Kowa, Gombe State; Border Communities Development Agency, Abuja; Federal Ministry of Works; and as many as eight other MDAs.  The sheer volume of the projects, the financial allocations to them and their misplacement in the budget are unacceptable.

The argument in support of these insertions has been that there is constitutional provision in the annual budgets to accommodate constituency projects for senators and members of the House of Representatives. It is estimated that each National Assembly member is entitled to constituency projects worth between N1 billion and N2 billion respectively. On the average, if N6.9 trillion is divided by the 469 lawmakers in the National Assembly, it follows that each has an allocation of N14 billion in the 2025 budget.

The argument that the projects would enhance the development of various senatorial districts is not supported by data. Over the years, constituency projects have been conduits for corruption and self-enrichment by our lawmakers.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) is weighed down with investigations into over 2,000 constituency projects across the country. Most of them failed to adhere to the country’s procurement law. Many were never executed. As at 2024, the anti-corruption agency claimed to have recovered about N5.6 billion from lawmakers, contractors, and about 200 banks involved in contract frauds related to constituency projects.  That is just a tip of the iceberg in the context of thousands of other projects that cannot be tracked all over the country. To insert some 11,122 projects into one year’s annual budget is to create the foundation for massive corruption that the country’s anti-corruption agencies do not have the human and technological capacity to investigate. The budget has been clearly rigged against the Nigerian people and in favour of our lawmakers.

The National Assembly must apologise to Senator Abdul Ningi, who was suspended in 2024 for raising the red flag about padding of that year’s budget with nondescript and frivolous projects worth some N3 trillion. His suspension was a clear act of intimidation meant to silence him and any other lawmaker who would attempt to expose the unwholesome practices in the chambers of the National Assembly.

Our lawmakers have failed to realise that they compromise their powers of oversight on the Executive when they engage in dubious and non-transparent practices, like the insertion of doubtful projects in the budget. This explains why lawmakers cannot call the Executive to question over national malaise; it explains why even heads of MDAs ignore invitations by committees of the National Assembly despite threats of sanctions. Our lawmakers cannot hold accountable the chief executives of MDAs who facilitated dubious and doubtful financial releases for shady or shoddy constituency projects. That is why the 10th National Assembly has no moral strength to hold ministers and chief executives of MDAs accountable for obvious wrongdoings.

This kind of collaboration between the Executive and the Legislature to misuse the country’s commonwealth promotes personal aggrandisement and frustrates the allocation of resources to sectors that positively affect the majority of Nigerians.

If the National Assembly must include projects in the budgets, such insertions must be thoroughly scrutinised to ensure they are in line with national priorities.

A situation in which over N2 trillion above the national priority of security is built into the budget is not just immoral, it is not justifiable. The Executive must, in future resist such moves, even if it will lead to a face-off between the two arms of government. The kind of fraternity between the Legislature and the Executive that accommodates insertion of selfish projects in the budget amounts to a rape of the Nigerian people.

It is time for stakeholders to come to a consensus about how Nigeria’s national budget should be prepared.