Opinion

Under Akpabio’s watch, Nigeria’s budget almost a bazaar

Published

4 months ago

July 27, 2026

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO,

HIS Excellency Distinguished Senator Obong Dr. Godswill Obot Akpabio, Senate President, two-tenure Governor of Akwa Ibom State, former Minister of Niger Delta, supervising the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDCC, former PDP Senate Minority Leader, who is no longer of interest to EFCC since he joined APC, should explain to Nigerians how the national budget became a bizarre bazaar in a blizzard of hustlers, under his keen watch.

Also read: Why Nigerian Businesses Still Can’t Borrow Despite Falling Inflation

This is not an allegation. It is a call for Akpabio, to in a clear voice, stripped of fake accents, devoid of derisive side remarks, to tell us how we thought we had a budget for the needs of Nigeria.

In the last few weeks, it is clearer that the scandals in the 2026 budget are competing for brazen awards.

Honourable Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, exposed a major budget scandal in 2016 by accusing Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Doguwa, and Minority Leader Leo Ogor of padding the 2016 budget. He claimed about 2,000 unauthorised and fictitious projects worth over ₦284 billion were smuggled into the budget.

The budget runs into thousands of page. The 2026 budget is in 2,790 pages, enough spaces for fake agencies and those endless solar street lights farmed out to government officials and agencies that have no relationship with street lights of any kind, to be inserted.

In 2016 Honourable Jibrin shouted until he was suspended with a lengthy absence beyond the law. Not one member of the House of Representatives spoke up in his defence though the accused prefaced the allegations with the admission that he was a beneficiary of the loot. He was suspended while the fat cats who he openly named stayed on their plum seats.

The award-winning anti-corruption Buhari administration said nothing. Its agencies followed the prompt.

Looting in this manner was called budget padding. If you have powers and adequate greed, you added whatever you wanted, often running into billions, and pulled it out as trappings of office. No questions.

The most we would hear are whimpers from those who were dealt with unfairly in the sharing of the loot.

Part of oversight functions became agencies being forced to execute “constituency projects” for legislature in parts far cast from their locations.

Have we forgotten that Federal College of Education, Umunze, Anambra State, was constructing roads in Surulere, Lagos State, 522 kilometres away? This was at a time the school considered its budget inadequate and its internal road were in a state – with no budget to fix them.

For fuller disclosure and perspective, Surulere was the constituency of the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, now the Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The construction board shamelessly announced, the project, with College of Education, Umunze, as the “client”.

Gbaja, as he is still fondly called, is not alone in this practice which persists and preceded his arrival at the headship of the House of Representatives.

The explanation from the Speaker’s Office deepened the mystery about the relationship between Umunze and Surulere.

“It is, therefore, crucial to inform the public that the Speaker did not divert or swap projects from the South East to South West, but that the legislature has a technical template for budgeting in which executing agencies of Federal Government, most time, are allotted jobs outside of their locations,” the statement clarified.

How does the College of Education, Umunze move from the “client” of the road project that was awarded to JRB Construction Limited, an Abuja-based company, to being the “executing agency” of its own project? Gbaja muddled up the explanation, if ever there was one.

The public only learnt “that the legislature has a technical template for budgeting in which executing agencies of Federal Government” were allocated projects outside their locations.

College of Education, Umunze did not bid for the project. It had no known competence in road construction. While the construction board stated that it was paying for the contract, it was also downgraded to an executing agency of a contract it supposedly awarded.

By the time the Auditor-General of the Federation audits the accounts of ministries and agencies fingers frequently point at the National Assembly as a promoter of opaque accounting practices.

The Auditor-General’s report forwarded to the National Assembly in 2025 exposed that in 2022, the Corporate Affairs Commission had N118.75 million undocumented spending, which CAC said it spent on Nigerian lawmakers on their frequent visits for oversight functions.

Will the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly look into these matters?Let us note that 2022 was also the year of College of Education, Umunze constructing roads in Surulere from the school’s annual budget.

It is in the midst of the abuse of budgets and budgeting processes – the building and renovating of palaces for traditional rulers, churches and mosques getting funding – that Akpabio made a most tepid statement that hinted at his timid determination to punish a contractor who he alleged embarrassed the National Assembly and Nigeria. Both can be merged to read Akpabio.

According to Akpabio, he was embarrassed while addressing the House of Representatives when he discovered that the microphones were not working well. He warned the contractor and said he had issued earlier warnings about shoddy maintenance jobs.

Why was Akpabio bringing his troubles with microphones to the attention of the public? What did he say that we needed microphones to hear?

Of all the issues buffeting Nigerians from all sides, he chose to intervene over malfunctioning microphones. It would be recorded for him among his many achievements.

The national budget is being frittered away. Funds, mostly borrowed, are being shared to individual interests that are in conflict with national interests. Akpabio is silent in a great example of absent leadership.

Akpabio will not do anything. Akpabio cannot do anything. His grovelling even in public before the President leaves little to wonder about what happens in private.

Turning up at the National Assembly proudly donnng the Tinubu cap, marked the beginning of his submission of the National Assembly to Tinubu.

When at the launching of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, renamed Tinubu Coastal Highway only last week, Akpabio broke into the “On your mandate we shall stand” song, stopping mid stanza on discovering that his croaky voice was the only one nauseating the public.

With or without microphone, Akpabio should address Nigerians on his silent role in the dispersal of our national resources through the imprimatur of the National Assembly which he controls. Could this be what standing on Tinubu’s mandate means?

Finally…
.FOR over three years Governor Hope Uzodinma has overseen the South-East like a viceroy accountable to Tinubu. He spoke for South-East or decided not to speak at all.

The summary of his speeches – the South-East is lucky to have Tinubu as President and in gratitude should vote him for another tortuous tenure.

The wider belief is that Tinubu has the South-East’s five Governors in his pocket. Alex Otti says Uzodinma cannot speak for other Governors and that they did not endorse Tinubu.

But when you listen to Otti speak about Tinubu, it is more than an endorsement. Otti possibly wants to endorse Tinubu directly not through a proxy.

NIGERIA’S football is of low capacity, riddled with administrative incapacity, technical incompetence, and corruption is a given.

It cannot survive without a major surgery to kick life into it. Any investment in our football today is a waste unless the shackles on our football are broken. First move would be dismantling the NFF which a Federal High Court declared illegal in 2012: the judgement subsists 14 years on.

The planned election should be on hold until the obstacles to inclusiveness, accountability, governance are rested.

Let us organise our football, that should be a priority over who attends the next FIFA Congress or who lugs the next meaningless titles. More next week.

MRS Oluremi Tinubu has just donated N2 billion to be invested in reviving the production of Akwete fabrics in Abia State. Nice one, though I keep wondering about the source of the money she donates.

WE should be grateful to whoever or whatever got Senator David Nweze Umahi quiet in the past week.

Could it be this? The Incorporated Trustees of the Southern Kaduna Peoples’ United Association, SOKAPU, has instituted a suit against Umahi before the Federal High Court in Kaduna against the Minister of Works, David Umahi, over the death of Mary Habila on June 27 at the minister’s residence.

SOKAPU is seeking an order compelling the conduct of an autopsy on the deceased to establish the cause of death and is also claiming N20 billion in damages against Umahi over the alleged loss of life arising from what it described as a breach of duty of care while the deceased was under his custody.

Also read: Presidency, Atiku Clash Over Tinubu US Forfeiture Case

Umahi was 63 yesterday and the President hailed him as “one of my outstanding, hardworking ministers, with passion, dedication to duty, and deep sense of patriotism”.

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Opinion

Our Great Tree of Peace: Keynote Address at All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit

Published

23 hours ago

November 9, 2026

Mariam Balogun

Distinguished leaders of government, members of the diplomatic community, representatives of security and law-enforcement agencies, traditional and religious leaders, distinguished guests, fellow Rotary members, ladies and gentlemen:

It is an honour to welcome you to the “All Nigeria Rotary Peace Summit.”

The question before us is how to come together, work toward a shared national future, and achieve true and lasting peace.

Nigeria has enormous potential. We have contributed to peace and stability across Africa, including through our work with the Economic Community of West African States and United Nations peacekeeping and Peace Support operations.

Our work in Liberia and other parts of Africa shows that we have the experience and ability to help prevent and manage conflict beyond our borders.

Now it is time to turn those energies inward — to bring our commitment to building peace among our neighbors and the world back home.

But we cannot impose peace. We must nurture it from the very roots of our society so it may grow into a great tree that will feed and shelter all of us under its protective embrace.

As a member of Rotary, when I consider this idea, I look to the philosophy of Positive Peace.

Peace, through this lens, is so much more than the absence of violence. To achieve true and lasting peace, we must consider the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.

Here in Nigeria, meaningful peace cannot rely on our security forces and government institutions alone. It requires every level of society to come together for the betterment of all.

To grow Positive Peace from the ground up, Rotary starts from the very foundation of life, as we have done here.
In 2022, Rotary began a program called, “Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria.”

Members of Rotary here in Nigeria and as far away as Germany partnered with federal and state health ministries to make giving birth safer for both mother and child.

The program has helped expectant mothers across three states and the capital receive better and more frequent prenatal care.

Community health workers made nearly 60,000 visits to homes of expectant mothers and spoke with them and their families. We supplied 158 health facilities with contraceptives, medicine, and equipment.

We have already seen positive outcomes. Maternal deaths were reduced by 77%, and newborn deaths were reduced by 45% at supported facilities.

There is more work to do, but we are making progress. This is one way we plant the seeds of peace in Nigeria and around the world — we listen to the community, work with people so they can make their own lives better, and we stay committed to our goals.

With each child born safely to a healthy mother, we ease the burden carried by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. We give families a greater sense of safety and security.

This is the beginning of Positive Peace. But members of Rotary do not stop once the seeds of peace are planted.

Since 2020, Nigeria has been free of the deadly grip of the wild poliovirus, which paralyzed and sometimes killed children when their lives had barely begun. And we continue to work with our friends at the World Health Organization and others to keep it that way and address the more recent outbreaks of variant poliovirus.

Rotary also builds peace directly. Members of Rotary clubs across Nigeria devote themselves to building peace every day.

And the year after Nigeria was declared wild polio-free, Rotary worked with Makerere University in Uganda to open a Peace Center, where students — called Peace Fellows — can learn how to build lasting peace both here in Nigeria and across Africa.

Over the years, more than 75 Rotary Peace Fellows have come from Nigeria. Some of our Peace Fellows are even here with us today.

I tell you this not to advertise Rotary (although we can always use new members). I tell you this because I want you to know that Rotary is already a quiet partner in peacebuilding — not only around the world — but here in our shared home.

As members of Rotary, we are not soldiers, ambassadors, or diplomats. We bring people together to find common purpose through service to others. We are here for Nigeria, and we are here to stay.

This year, I have called on every member of Rotary to Create Lasting Impact, and today, my brothers and sisters of Nigeria, I ask the same of every one of us.

I ask us to look at every level of society in Nigeria and consider how we can make all our lives better — not only today, but far into the future of this great nation. We may not speak the same language, worship the same way, or live the same way, but our nation’s future depends on all of us working together.

This summit is an opportunity to turn our shared commitment to peace into practical action — to take mere words and transform them into a bright future for us and all our children.

To my dear friends and family of Rotary here today, I challenge you to make peacebuilding in Nigeria our legacy of lasting impact.

As I have said to the Rotary world time and time again, we must consider how everything we do contributes to peace and pursue that peace purposefully and deliberately.

Rotary can help build confidence between institutions and communities, strengthen public trust, and ease the burden of everyday life that makes peacebuilding that much harder … but we must do so with purpose.

And before we can Create Lasting Impact in Nigeria, we must first have the courage to change ourselves, whether we are members of Rotary or not.

We cannot continue to do what we have always done and expect our great tree of peace to magically sprout from the ground. We must nurture our country and ourselves with all our being.

Give yourselves permission to be changed by what you see and hear at this summit.

That is how lasting impact is achieved — through people who are willing to change, institutions that are prepared to work for everyone, and communities that have the capacity to sustain progress.

And once we allow ourselves to change, we open ourselves to a new future — a future where the circumstances of someone’s birth do not determine their access to justice, opportunity, or dignity.

A future where differences are respected, where violence is rejected, and where we all come together, not as different groups in competition, but as Nigerians in harmony.

As we begin this summit, let us commit to more than resolutions and declarations. Let us commit to stability through change.

Remember that our true measure of success is not the words we share among ourselves today, but the impact of our actions that lasts generation after generation.

And if our commitment to peace is true — if our capacity for change is enough — our children, and their children after them, will enjoy the fruits of our labor under our great tree of peace — protected, safe, and free.

Thank you.