When Nigeria’s National Budget Becomes a Marketplace of Political Favour

When Nigeria’s National Budget Becomes a Marketplace of Political Favour

By Jerry Adesewo

Some interventions in public discourse are easy to dismiss as political criticism. Then some force one to pause and look again at something that has become so familiar that we may have stopped noticing how unusual it is. Babafemi Ojudu’s recent article, “When a National Budget Becomes a Village Wish List,” belongs to the latter category. His argument is uncomfortable, sometimes deliberately provocative, but beneath the sarcasm is a serious question that Nigeria cannot afford to ignore: what exactly is the purpose of a national budget?

Ojudu’s concern was triggered by a succession of budget provisions that, at first glance, appear difficult to reconcile with the idea of strategic national planning. He referred to reports of almost ₦1 billion earmarked for the purchase of musical equipment for a church, billions allocated for the construction and renovation of churches and mosques, and another provision of about ₦1 billion for the renovation of a village palace. But the issue became considerably larger when he cited a report by The Punch that about 78 ministries, departments, and agencies of the federal government had set aside nearly ₦400 billion in the 2026 budget for projects including community halls, mosques, traditional rulers’ palaces, village market squares, and civic centres, alongside provisions for grains, motorcycles, mini-stadiums, museums, and tricycles.

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Reading Ojudu, what struck me was that the issue is not really about churches, mosques, palaces, or community halls. Those are merely the visible symptoms of what may be a deeper problem in Nigeria’s public finance system. The real issue is whether the national budget is gradually becoming an aggregation of individual political interests rather than a coherent expression of what the country needs to achieve as a nation.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with government supporting communities. There is also nothing wrong with preserving important cultural institutions or partnering with religious organisations on programmes that have clear public value. Churches and mosques are important parts of Nigerian society. They provide education, healthcare, humanitarian assistance, and social support to millions of people. Traditional institutions also have significant cultural and historical relevance. But the existence of these institutions does not automatically make every expenditure associated with them a legitimate responsibility of the Federal Government.

That is where Ojudu’s questions become important. Why should a Federal Government ministry or agency whose statutory responsibility is agriculture, research, industry, technology, defence or another national function become a vehicle for financing a church, mosque, palace, or community facility? What is the national development objective behind such spending? Who proposed the project? Who approved it? What criteria were used to determine its cost? And, perhaps most importantly, what alternative use of that money was rejected in order to accommodate it?

These are not anti-religion questions. They are questions about public accountability.

Indeed, the religious dimension of the controversy should not be allowed to distract from the larger principle. If public money is allocated to churches, Muslims can legitimately ask why. If it is allocated to mosques, Christians can ask the same question. But perhaps the better question is whether the Federal Government should be routinely funding either. In a constitutional democracy with citizens of different faiths and beliefs, the government must be especially careful when public funds are used for religious infrastructure.

There may be legitimate exceptions. A historic church, mosque, or traditional palace could, for instance, qualify for government intervention where it forms part of Nigeria’s cultural heritage, tourism infrastructure, or historical preservation programme. In such circumstances, the expenditure is not necessarily about subsidising religion; it is about preserving national heritage. But that justification is very different from simply placing the renovation of a place of worship or the purchase of its musical equipment inside the national budget.

The distinction matters because public resources are limited. Every naira allocated to one project carries an opportunity cost. If ₦1 billion is spent on an item that has little connection with national development, that is ₦1 billion that cannot simultaneously be used to equip a hospital, build a laboratory, improve a school, support agricultural production, fund research, or strengthen infrastructure. The question is therefore not merely whether the government can afford a particular project. The more important question is whether Nigeria can afford to make that project a priority.

This is where Ojudu’s comparison with India’s development experience becomes particularly instructive. His argument is that successful countries have historically treated their budgets as instruments for pursuing long-term national objectives. India, for instance, built its development strategy around broad priorities such as industrialisation, food security, scientific advancement, infrastructure, technology, and human capital. Whatever one may think of India’s political or economic model, the underlying lesson is difficult to dispute: nations make progress when their public expenditure is deliberately connected to a larger vision of where they want to be.

Nigeria once had a stronger tradition of national planning. Ojudu points to the development plans and large industrial projects conceived in earlier decades, including the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, the Eleme Petrochemical Complex and the Aluminium Smelter Company at Ikot Abasi. Many of these projects have subsequently become symbols of missed opportunities because of poor management, policy inconsistency, and institutional failures. Yet their original conception was rooted in a clear national ambition: industrialise Nigeria and build productive capacity.

That distinction is worth remembering. The failure of some of those projects does not necessarily mean that the ambition behind them was wrong. In fact, their failure may teach us that national vision is only one part of development; institutions, management, continuity, and accountability are equally necessary.

What seems more troubling today is the apparent shift from asking what Nigeria needs to asking what can be inserted into the budget for a particular constituency. Once that becomes the dominant logic, the national budget begins to resemble a marketplace. Every political actor wants a project. Every community wants a visible allocation. Every influential person wants something that can be presented to constituents as evidence of political relevance. Ministries and agencies become channels through which these demands are accommodated.

This is where constituency projects require a more nuanced conversation. Not every constituency project is wasteful. A rural road, health centre, school, water project, or agricultural facility can have enormous value to a community and still contribute to national development. The problem arises when the location of a project becomes more important than its purpose or when projects are selected because they satisfy political expectations rather than because they address clearly established development needs.

A national budget should be capable of accommodating local needs, but those needs must fit within a national framework. A road in a village can be part of a national transportation strategy. A health centre can contribute to a national healthcare plan. A school can strengthen human capital. A market can support agricultural value chains. The fact that a project is local does not make it insignificant. What matters is whether the project has a defensible connection to a larger development objective.

This is why I believe the most important part of Ojudu’s argument is not his criticism of any individual budget line. It is his concern about the gradual disappearance of a national story from the budget.

A country’s budget should tell its citizens where their government believes the country should be going. If Nigeria wants to become a manufacturing power, that ambition should be visible in the allocation of resources to industry, infrastructure, energy, skills, and finance. If we want to become a knowledge economy, then our universities, research institutions, technology ecosystem, and human capital should reflect that ambition. If agriculture is central to our economic transformation, farmers should see a budget that supports productivity, storage, processing, and market access. If healthcare is a priority, the state of our hospitals and primary healthcare centres should provide evidence of that commitment.

Instead, when thousands of unrelated projects are inserted into the same financial document, it becomes difficult to identify the national destination. We see the demands of individual communities, ministries, lawmakers, and interest groups but struggle to see the larger picture.

That, to me, is the danger of what Ojudu calls a “village wish list.”

The problem is not the village. Nigeria’s villages matter. The problem is when the national budget loses the ability to distinguish between what a community wants and what the nation urgently needs.

There is another dimension to this conversation that deserves attention: the role of the National Assembly. Budget scrutiny cannot be reduced to a ceremonial exercise in which legislators defend or celebrate projects associated with their constituencies. Parliament has a constitutional responsibility to examine public expenditure and ensure that scarce resources are directed towards legitimate public purposes. Where questionable allocations appear, lawmakers should be able to explain their rationale to Nigerians.

The same standard should apply to the executive. Ministries and agencies should not simply defend projects because they have appeared in an appropriation document. They should be able to demonstrate how those projects relate to their mandates and to the government’s broader development agenda.

Transparency should therefore go beyond publishing the budget. Nigerians need to understand who proposed projects, why they were selected, how their costs were determined, and what outcomes are expected. If a project is important enough to receive public money, it should be important enough for government to explain publicly.

Ojudu’s sarcasm about the possibility of eventually budgeting for rainmakers, fortune tellers, and entertainers may sound exaggerated, but it makes a serious point about normalisation. Once the principle of strategic priority is weakened, the range of things that can be justified as government expenditure becomes almost limitless. What appears outrageous this year can become ordinary next year, and what becomes ordinary can eventually become politically untouchable.

Nigeria’s greatest challenge may therefore not simply be that it lacks money. It may be that we have not been sufficiently disciplined about deciding what deserves the money we have.

We are a country with enormous needs and limited resources. We cannot afford to fund everything that is desirable. We must fund what is necessary, productive, and strategically important. This requires political courage because someone will inevitably be disappointed when government says no to a project.

But saying no is part of governance.

A government that attempts to satisfy every demand will eventually have insufficient resources to pursue transformative projects. A legislature that treats every local demand as an entitlement risks turning national planning into political bargaining. And citizens who judge their representatives solely by the number of projects they secure for their constituencies may unintentionally encourage the very system they later complain about.

For me, that is the lasting reflection from Ojudu’s intervention. The question before Nigeria is not whether villages need halls, whether communities need markets or whether religious organisations have needs. Of course they do. The question is whether the Federal Government’s limited resources should be deployed to meet those needs through a national budget when there are more fundamental responsibilities demanding attention.

A national budget is more than a financial document. It is a declaration of national ambition. It should tell us not merely what government has been persuaded to spend money on but what government has decided matters most for the future of the country.

If we lose that distinction, we may continue to produce larger budgets without producing a stronger nation. And that is perhaps the most uncomfortable question raised by Ojudu’s article:

Are we budgeting for Nigeria’s future, or simply budgeting for everybody’s present appetite?