…1,647 Projects Parked Under Institutions With Limited Statutory Mandates
…Roads, Erosion Control, Hospital Solar Schemes Routed Through Academic Institutions
An exclusive data-driven analysis of the 2026 Appropriation Act by THE WHISTLER has uncovered a massive budget-offloading scheme whereby five relatively small academic institutions and research centres were allocated a combined N565.73bn for projects that bear little or no relationship to their statutory mandates.
By analysing all 95,630 line items contained in the 2,604-page 2026 Appropriation Act, THE WHISTLER found that the institutions, which ordinarily exist to train students, conduct research and provide specialised education, have instead become major channels for constituency projects ranging from erosion control and road construction to hospital electrification, solar streetlights and empowerment programmes.
The investigation identified 1,647 flagged capital projects routed through the five institutions.
The largest beneficiary is the Federal Co-operative College, Oji River, Enugu State, which alone accounts for 705 projects worth N261.52bn. Established primarily to train cooperative officers and promote cooperative education, the college received almost half of the total value of all flagged projects.
Next is the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) with 391 projects valued at N122.35bn. Although the institute’s mandate is to conduct research into indigenous building materials and road technologies, the volume and nature of projects assigned to it extend far beyond research activities.
The Federal College of Horticulture, Dadin-Kowa, Gombe State, followed with 328 projects worth N85.72bn despite its statutory responsibility being limited to horticultural education, nursery management and crop propagation.
Similarly, the Federal Co-operative College, Ibadan, which focuses on cooperative education and training, was allocated 147 projects valued at N68.13bn, while the Federal College of Agriculture, Ishiagu, Ebonyi State, received 76 projects amounting to N28.02bn.
Combined, the five institutions were assigned projects worth N565.73bn, despite lacking the statutory mandates, engineering capacity or administrative structures expected for executing nationwide civil engineering works and large-scale infrastructure programmes.
The most striking example is the Federal Co-operative College, Oji River (MDA Code: 0215031001).
Designed as a specialised institution for cooperative studies, the college was allocated 705 separate capital projects with a cumulative value of N261.52bn.
A closer examination of page 739 of the Appropriation Act illustrates the scale of unrelated projects clustered under the college’s budget.
Within a single page, the institution was assigned N500m each for erosion control projects in Awgu, Oji River and Aninri Local Government Areas, bringing the total for erosion control to N1.5bn.
In addition, another N400m was earmarked for the installation of solar-powered streetlights across Aninri, Awgu and Oji River, while N400m was allocated for youth entrepreneurship empowerment programmes.
The same page also contains N350m for the provision of mini-grid solar power systems for hospitals, bringing the value of projects listed on that page alone to N2.65bn.
The allocations raise significant questions because erosion control ordinarily falls under agencies responsible for environmental management, while hospital electrification is typically executed by institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Health or the Rural Electrification Agency. Yet these projects appear under the budget of a cooperative college.
Elsewhere in the budget, specifically on page 707, the same institution was assigned two separate N500m allocations for the asphalting of selected farm roads in Udi, Awgu, Oji River and Aninri LGAs, further expanding its portfolio beyond education into heavy civil engineering.
A similar pattern appears in the allocations to the Federal College of Horticulture, Dadin-Kowa, Gombe State (MDA Code: 0215034001).
Although established to provide education and research in horticulture, seedling production and nursery management, the college received 328 projects worth N85.72bn.
Among the projects identified is a N714m road construction project captured on page 790 of the Appropriation Act.
Other allocations include the distribution of vehicles for e-hailing services as well as the construction of prayer halls in commercial centres located far from the institution’s base in Gombe State.
Legal mandates establishing the affected institutions indicate that none was created to execute nationwide infrastructure projects or administer large-scale constituency interventions.
Budget analysts and governance experts who reviewed the findings identified several reasons why lawmakers increasingly route projects through relatively small colleges and specialised agencies.
According to them, mainstream ministries such as Works, Health, Water Resources and Environment generally face stronger procurement oversight and stricter compliance requirements from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), making them less attractive for politically inserted projects.
They also noted that many specialised colleges lack large procurement departments staffed by engineers and project management professionals, creating opportunities for external influence over contract awards.
In addition, experts said distributing projects across multiple institutions using numerous allocations of between N350m and N500m tends to attract less public scrutiny than concentrating multi-billion-naira projects under a single ministry or agency.
NASS Source Links Inflated Allocations To Lawmakers
Efforts by THE WHISTLER to obtain an official response from the National Assembly over allegations of budget padding were unsuccessful.
When our correspondent visited the office of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Senator Olamilekan Solomon Adeola, on Wednesday, aides said he had left shortly after the plenary session.
Subsequent attempts to reach him on Thursday were also unsuccessful. Repeated calls to his mobile telephone line did not connect, while a text message explaining the purpose of the inquiry had not been responded to as of the time this report was filed.
However, a senior National Assembly source familiar with the operations of the Appropriations Committee, alleged that the insertion of inflated figures into the budget was not a new practice among lawmakers.
The source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, claimed that the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, had long served as a conduit for padded budget allocations.
“The Cooperative College in Oji River is a notorious haven for warehousing funds for lawmakers from different parts of the country, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives,” he said.
Explaining how the alleged budget-padding process works, the source said: “Senators and Rep members usually push the amount they want inserted into the budget through the chairmen of the Appropriation Committees in the two chambers.
“So what the Appropriation chairmen do is to pick some obscure federal institutions for the offloading of various amounts for as many lawmakers as possible.
“For instance, the N565bn you see in the budget of the Oji River Cooperative College and four other institutions could belong to as many senators and House members as possible.
“Each of them knows how much they are entitled to out of the entire sum in the institution’s inflated budget.”
The source further alleged that lawmakers eventually access the funds through the execution of constituency projects.
According to him, certain officials of the errant institutions have become adept at handling such contracts on behalf of lawmakers, who typically nominate the contractors.
“These government officials usually deduct administrative fees and also collect their cuts from each contract they execute on behalf of the lawmakers,” the source alleged.
“It is the same process in the four other institutions that were allocated the cumulative N565bn.”
The source also claimed that certain officials at the Oji River college were particularly notorious for facilitating the arrangement.
“It may interest you to know that some of them actually canvass for such deals with the lawmakers at every budget cycle.
“The trend is not peculiar to the 2027 budget. It has been going on for many years. Go and check the budget approvals for those instructions in previous fiscal years and you will discover the same huge allocations year in, year out.”
Also, calls placed to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture’s Head of Department of Information, Mr Ezeaja Ikemefuna, were not answered, while messages sent to him received no response at the time of filing this report.
(The Whistler)