A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Sowunmi, has called on the Federal Government to scrap constituency projects from the national budget, describing them as “a channel for budget padding, corruption and duplication of executive duties.”
Sowunmi, who served as the spokesperson for Atiku Abubakar’s 2019 presidential campaign, said constituency projects have weakened the National Assembly’s independence and undermined its oversight responsibility.
His comments follow a fresh report by BudgIT, a civic-tech group working on budget transparency and accountability in Nigeria and Africa. In an 18-page analysis released by the group, the National Assembly was accused of inserting 11,122 projects worth ₦6.93 trillion into the 2025 national budget signed into law by President Bola Tinubu on 28 February.
The inserted projects account for 12.5 per cent of the ₦54.99 trillion budget, according to BudgIT. A closer look at the figures showed that 238 projects—each costing above ₦5 billion and amounting to ₦2.29 trillion in total—were inserted into the budget “with little or no justification.”
BudgIT further noted that 3,573 projects valued at ₦653.19 billion were tied directly to federal constituencies, while 1,972 projects worth ₦444.04 billion were allocated to senatorial districts.
Reacting to the findings in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, Sowunmi argued that the continuous retention of constituency projects had eroded public confidence in the nation’s budgeting system.
“The problem with the National Assembly is how we end up with a process that we call constituency projects,” he said.
“I feel we are coming to a point where we have to remove that from the privileges that the National Assembly members get, the reason being that the idea of constituency projects is what makes them incapable of doing oversight.”
Sowunmi added that lawmakers who constantly lobby ministries and agencies for project contracts are already compromising their independence.
“If lawmakers have to be lobbying ministries and agencies for contracts and all of that, that already means that there is a collaborative potential and a lack of independence between the legislature and the executive,” he said.
He noted that although constituency projects were originally introduced to enable lawmakers deliver development to their constituencies, the initiative had been hijacked for personal gain.
“Constituency projects only crept into our democracy because the government was trying to figure out how to give them (lawmakers) something to take back to their people, but I think that the process is now over-abused,” he said.
According to Sowunmi, what was meant to serve as a tool for grassroots development has morphed into a political reward system and a loophole for self-enrichment.
He urged the Federal Government to remove constituency projects from the budget and rechannel the funds to transparent, impactful and sustainable development programmes.
