by Olaitan Babatunde

There is a familiar scene in Nigerian politics. A senator or House of Representatives member arrives in a community, cuts a ribbon beside a borehole, school block, road, solar light or empowerment centre, and the project is presented as part of the lawmaker’s achievements. The community is grateful, the photographs go online and the politician gets another item for the next campaign poster. But there is a question that does not always make it into the celebration: who actually paid for the project, who chose it, who awarded the contract and who is responsible if the project is abandoned? This is where constituency projects become more complicated than the ribbon cutting suggests.

Constituency projects, officially referred to at the federal level as Zonal Intervention Projects, are projects included in the national budget to address identified needs in particular constituencies or zones. Legislators nominate projects they want reflected in the budget, but they do not legally become the contractors simply because their names are associated with them. Once a project is appropriated, implementation is generally the responsibility of the executive arm through the relevant Ministry, Department or Agency. OrderPaper’s ConsTrack project explains the distinction clearly: legislators attract or nominate the projects, while the executive is responsible for funding and implementing them and the legislature maintains oversight. That distinction matters because Nigerians often ask their senator why a project has not been completed when the senator may not control the ministry or agency actually responsible for executing the contract.

But if legislators do not execute the projects, why are they so involved in choosing them? The argument is straightforward. A national government sitting in Abuja may not know that a particular community needs a health centre, water scheme, classroom block or rural road. Legislators represent specific constituencies and can bring those local needs into the national budgeting process. In theory, citizens should have a voice in identifying those needs. In practice, that process has been criticised for not always being sufficiently transparent or participatory. ConsTrack notes that while legislators are expected to consult constituents on the choice and location of projects, some have been accused of determining projects themselves or bypassing meaningful consultation. This creates one of the central problems with the system: the person who publicly takes credit for a project may not be the person who executes it, while the people responsible for execution may be less visible to the community.

Then there is the money. This is where the constituency project story becomes an accountability story rather than simply a political one. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission has tracked constituency and executive projects and reported problems including poor execution, abandoned projects, project duplication, overvaluation, projects placed on private property, contractors failing to perform and alleged collusion involving contractors and aides. In one phase of its tracking exercise, ICPC reported that some projects were duplicated in the budgets of Ministries, Departments and Agencies even though they had also appeared as constituency projects. The Commission has also documented cases where projects were abandoned after a change of legislator, partly because there was no effective handover or continuity between the outgoing and incoming sponsor. These findings do not mean every constituency project is fraudulent or every lawmaker is responsible for an abandoned project. They show instead that the system has several points where public money can lose value if planning, procurement, implementation and monitoring are weak.

There are now attempts to tighten that system. In June 2026, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation directed Ministries, Departments and Agencies to stop processing payments for constituency and zonal intervention projects without a Certificate of Verification and Compliance from the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs. The directive followed concerns about agencies failing to comply with existing guidelines for implementing and reporting constituency projects. The Budget Office also publishes quarterly budget implementation reports, while ICPC continues to track selected government projects. These mechanisms matter because a project should not disappear from public attention once it enters the budget. Citizens can ask: What exactly was approved? Where is it located? Which ministry or agency is implementing it? How much was appropriated? How much has been released? Who received the contract? What percentage has been completed? And, most importantly, can we see the project on the ground? The constituency project should not be a mysterious pot of money attached to a politician’s name. It is public money attached to a public purpose. If citizens can follow the project from the budget document to the construction site, then it becomes much harder for everyone involved to simply point at someone else when the project disappears.