The Nigerian Senate is facing renewed scrutiny after allegations emerged that the 2024 federal budget was inflated by over N3.7 trillion.
This controversy has turned the spotlight on a legislative body increasingly viewed as compromised and disconnected from the socioeconomic realities of its citizens.
At the heart of the storm is Senator Abdul Ningi’s suspension, following his disclosure that the 2024 budget passed by the National Assembly was inflated beyond what was presented by the Executive. While the Senate moved swiftly to discipline the whistleblower, the episode lays bare a pattern of systemic elite capture, fiscal distortion, and institutional decay that extends far beyond Nigeria’s borders. Similar tensions in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa suggest that Africa’s democratic accountability mechanisms are straining under the weight of political expediency and economic desperation.
A Budget System Rigged for Failure
Nigeria’s budgetary process has historically been more a matter of formality than an effective instrument of governance. Since the Fourth Republic, successive administrations have treated annual budgets as political rituals, where executive ambitions meet legislative rent-seeking. Budget padding, opaque insertions, and inflated line items have become the norm, reducing fiscal planning to a transactional exercise detached from developmental priorities.
The Nigerian Constitution confers oversight powers on the National Assembly. But that mandate, designed to safeguard against executive overreach, has become a tool for pork-barrel politics and constituency project racketeering. Projects appear and disappear like mirages visible on paper, absent on the ground.
N3.7 Trillion Discrepancy Transparency in Reverse
Senator Ningi’s claim that the budget was padded by N3.7 trillion triggered outrage not just for its magnitude, but for what it implied: that the very custodians of oversight had become complicit in fiscal mismanagement. His suspension exposed how legislative accountability has morphed into an insider’s code of silence.
During floor debates, senior lawmakers dismissed the allegations as fabrications. Yet none adequately explained the origin or rationale for the discrepancies. The budget’s final breakdown, particularly in capital allocations and zonal interventions, remains hazy. What’s more, investigative follow-through from anti-graft agencies has been largely absent, underscoring institutional reluctance to probe legislative malfeasance.
Recurring allegations, audits, suspensions, probes, and arrests mark Nigeria’s budgetary history over the past decade. From Sanusi’s $20 billion NNPC shortfall claim in 2014, through the PwC forensic audit, Jibrin’s suspension and recall, the 2020 NDDC probe, and the 2022 arrest of the Accountant-General, to the 2024 Senate suspension of Abdul Ningi over a ₦3.7 trillion budget-padding claim—the pattern underscores persistent gaps in fiscal accountability. These milestones reflect a system where irregularities are chronic, enforcement is reactive, and public trust in the budget process remains fragile.
The Pan-African Pattern
In Kenya, the 2024 “Finance Bill Uprising” ignited nationwide protests over opaque tax laws and budget excesses, culminating in a partial repeal of controversial fiscal measures. South Africa continues to face parliamentary resistance to forensic audits into Eskom’s debt-financed bailout programs, while Ghana’s opposition alleges that off-budget expenditures have widened its debt servicing burden.
Nigeria’s case is not an outlier. Across Africa, budgetary opacity, weak civic education, and elite manipulation have blurred the lines between democratic accountability and economic theatre.
Budget Allocation vs Delivery: A Story of Promises Unkept
The real tragedy is not the budgeting process itself, but what follows. Between 2020 and 2024, over 40% of federal capital allocations remained unexecuted. Projects in health, education, and transport are routinely announced, funded, and abandoned.
- In Nasarawa State, a 100-bed maternity hospital funded in 2021 remains an empty structure with no staff or equipment.
- In Oyo, road contracts awarded for inter-town connectivity have stalled mid-execution due to the misappropriation of funds.
Caption
Nigeria’s budget allocations continue to rise across health, education, infrastructure, and agriculture between 2020 and 2025. Yet execution rates remain consistently lower, with most sectors delivering barely two-thirds of their planned spending. The widening gap reflects systemic inefficiencies and weak accountability in public finance management, leaving citizens underserved despite headline increases in allocations.
- Health: While allocations steadily rise from ₦0.55 trillion in 2020 to ₦0.9 trillion projected in 2025, execution lags, reaching only about two-thirds of the budgeted amounts.
- Education: The sector exhibits consistent under-execution, with allocations increasing from ₦0.4 trillion to ₦0.7 trillion projected for 2025, but actual spending rarely exceeds 65% of the allocations.
- Infrastructure: This sector commands the highest allocations (₦1.2 trillion in 2020, rising to ₦1.9 trillion projected in 2025). Yet execution remains subdued, hovering around 60–70%, revealing persistent gaps in capital project delivery.
- Agriculture: Allocations rise modestly from ₦0.35 trillion to ₦0.55 trillion by 2025, but execution stagnates at less than ₦0.35 trillion, showing a consistent shortfall in actual investment.
- Overall Pattern: Across all sectors, allocations steadily grow year by year, but execution fails to keep pace. This trend reflects systemic inefficiencies, leakages, and weak implementation capacity in Nigeria’s budgeting system.
- Key Insight: The widening gap undermines service delivery, particularly in healthcare and education, where citizens feel the shortfalls most directly. Infrastructure’s chronic execution gaps pose long-term risks for growth.
The fading power of civic institutions exacerbates this gulf between budget and reality. Traditional leaders, religious clergy, and university administrators have largely failed to hold public officials accountable. Where they once acted as moral custodians, many now serve as patrons in the political machine.
Elite Capture and the Erosion of Civic Duty
“The budget is no longer a statement of priorities but a spreadsheet of political interests.”
Dr Hadiza Ibrahim, Public Finance Scholar.
This observation underscores the extent to which Nigeria’s fiscal process has become a tool for political patronage rather than national development.
A cynical alliance of legislators, contractors, and bureaucrats has overtaken Nigeria’s budgeting process. Fiscal governance is not guided by evidence based planning but by who benefits.
A widespread civic illiteracy worsens this elite capture. Budget cycles are often alien to the everyday citizen, and civil society engagement, while growing, remains sporadic. The very tools that could empower oversight of public budget portals, FOI requests, and procurement dashboards are underutilised.
Civic responsibility, once taught in schools and echoed from pulpits, has withered. In its place, a culture of spectator democracy has emerged.
“You cannot build roads to development on a foundation of silence. Citizens must ask, inspect, and demand.”
Nuhu Zakari, Director, Civic Ledger.
His call to action captures the civic inertia that enables fiscal opacity, underscoring the need for widespread public participation and institutional scrutiny.
“The budget is no longer a statement of priorities but a spreadsheet of political interests.”
Dr Hadiza Ibrahim, Public Finance Scholar.
“You cannot build roads to development on a foundation of silence. Citizens must ask, inspect, and demand.”
Nuhu Zakari, Director, Civic Ledger.
Implications for Markets, Policy, and Social Cohesion
“When legislators become the architects of opacity, democracy begins to rot from the roof.”
Civil Society Budget Coalition
Investors, both domestic and foreign, increasingly view Nigeria’s budget as a risk signal. Misalignments between allocations and outcomes distort macroeconomic indicators, disrupt infrastructure timelines, and reduce policy credibility.
International development partners have begun linking disbursements to budget performance audits. The AfDB and the World Bank have paused certain disbursements pending the achievement of reform benchmarks. Meanwhile, domestic capital formation is stalling as local SMEs suffer from infrastructure and energy shortfalls tied to abandoned projects.
If left unaddressed, this fiscal opacity risks not just economic stagnation but political instability. Public disillusionment with democratic institutions is on the rise. Calls for citizen-led budget tracking, legislative audits, and participatory budgeting must be amplified.
The Nigerian budget controversy is a mirror held to the continent. It reflects how postcolonial states have failed to transform public finance from elite ritual into a social contract. But within crisis lies opportunity. Reforming budgeting practices, educating citizens, and holding elites accountable is not just a policy imperative; it is a democratic necessity.
The road to accountability is long, but it begins with knowing where the money is going.
