If you listen closely, especially past the ‘Nigeria will not kill me’ jokes, you will hear anger hiding in people’s voices, because constituency projects are not just one of those Nigerian-budget comedy skits we laugh about on social media.

So when Oluseun Onigbinde reeled out those numbers on the Extra Sheets podcast, with thousands of projects stuffed into the budget and trillions of naira sprinkled across MDAs with no planning logic, it sounded surreal.

And like all things captured in Nigeria, citizens get the short end of the stick while politicians drive home with the sirens.

What is really failing here is public financial management and democratic accountability, the very spine that is supposed to hold Nigeria’s development together.

Budgeting should be the roadmap for health centres, power lines, roads, schools, water systems and public goods. Instead, we now have an underground political supply chain that routes decisions through individual politicians, leaving planning agencies, technical ministries and open procurement stranded on the roadside.

And why is it failing?

Because Nigeria has perfected a toxic stew of legal ambiguity, political incentives and weak safeguards. Over the years, the National Assembly has treated the executive’s budget proposal like a suggestion box, inserting projects as if they were topping up suya, thousands at a time, without any fiscal guardrails.

The 2025 figures that ‘Seun mentioned are not an accident, as they are what the system now produces on purpose.
Once these projects are inserted, no one checks if they make sense.

MDAs are forced to host items they did not design, feasibility studies disappear into thin air, and procurement rules get bypassed like potholes during rainy season. Meanwhile, everything is funded with borrowed money, meaning we are deepening debt without improving productivity.

Then comes the political sugar-coating, with constituency projects being used as campaign souvenirs with respect to tarred palaces, streetlights, grinding machines, and roads that vanish once you get within three kilometres of them.

And if you follow the money, you enter a maze of warrants without cash backing, committees with friendly loyalties, and contractors who show up only when their political godfather whistles.

So who should we hold responsible?

Start with the legislators who inflate budgets with projects that have no fiscal limits. Add the executive, which looks away or smiles approvingly.

MDAs themselves cannot escape blame for accepting items that violate technical standards. Contractors and middlemen also thrive in this chaos, greasing the machinery.

And our oversight institutions, including budget offices, auditors, anti-corruption bodies, often lack the independence or firepower to call anyone to order.

The cost of this mess is that half-baked projects litter the country, with buildings standing without purpose, solar streetlights retiring after their first rainy season, and empowerment items ending up in black markets.

Debt escalates because we borrow for political consumption, and public trust shatters when citizens realise their taxes and national wealth are funding vanity projects.

While money is wasted on unnecessary expenses, real schools, hospitals, water systems, and infrastructure remain missing from communities.

However, the future could become perilous for the political class only if citizens finally connect the dots, as technology is giving people the tools to fight back.

A smartphone and free mapping apps are enough to expose a ‘completed’ project that is nothing but a bush path. Cross this with a tightening tax system where citizens are being forced to pay more, and suddenly Nigerians will start demanding to see the value of every naira.

The combination of digital proof and economic pressure can ignite civic resistance that no politician is prepared for.
Yet this energy can be channelled constructively if leaders do not treat citizens like ATMs with no password control.

And that’s where a new budget order is urgently needed.

Nigeria needs a legally defined Constituency Project Fund (CPF), small but transparent, clearly capped, and published in one line in the Appropriation Act.

No more scattered insertions across MDAs. Let communities openly choose the projects; let independent escrow accounts pay contractors only after real work is verified. 

Then we must limit legislative power to inflate the budget. Lawmakers should be able to reallocate, yes, but not increase the total capital budget unless they meet strict conditions and a public justification.

If it takes the Supreme Court to settle who owns the power of the purse, then let the court speak once and for all.

And finally, Nigeria needs a fully open procurement and project-tracking system, with geotagged photos, contractor details, payment records and inspection reports published in real time.

Citizens also have work to do.

We need to demand that our lawmakers enact the CPF law, use FoI to request project documents, go to project sites, and support public-interest lawsuits.

At the end of the day, politicians have a choice to continue the poverty-politics game of petty projects and ballooning budgets or embrace a new compact built on transparency, limits, and service delivery.

If they choose the former, they should prepare for a civic tech era and a revenue-conscious electorate that is becoming harder to deceive by the day.