A recent civic accountability report by Tracka, the citizen-led monitoring platform under BudgIT, has exposed significant failures in the execution of federal government-funded projects under President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The 2024/2025 report reveals widespread cases of abandoned, unfinished, and fraudulent projects throughout the country.
According to the report, which monitored 2,760 projects across 28 states, 92 projects valued at N15.07 billion were identified as “fraudulently delivered.”
These fraudulent activities included the diversion of funds, moving projects to unauthorized locations, and paying for work that had already been completed in previous budget cycles.
The data breaks down the status of the monitored projects as follows:
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1,438 were completed.
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660 are currently ongoing.
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471 were never executed.
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99 have been abandoned.
Tracka highlighted that five states—Imo, Lagos, Kwara, Abia, and Ogun—account for “57.1 per cent of all the fraudulently delivered projects,” totaling N8.61 billion of the diverted or misused funds.
The investigation also focused on critical infrastructure, such as dams and healthcare.
Despite the frequent national grid collapses in 2024, Tracka tracked 16 dam projects worth N432 million across 13 states; however, “none of the projects had been completed at the time of assessment.”
Four of these dams were abandoned, while the rest were either stalled or had not yet started.
The situation in healthcare was similarly concerning. Out of 47 primary healthcare centers listed as “revitalised” across 25 states, only 26 showed actual improvement.
The report noted that because of these failures, residents in many areas are still forced to travel long distances for basic care, as facilities suffer from “inadequate staffing, poor equipment and weak sanitation standards.”
In the Niger Delta, 48 projects were monitored. While 29 were finished, “two were untraceable despite confirmed funding,” and 13 had not even commenced.
Despite these failures, the report shared 15 success stories where active citizen pressure forced the completion of projects, such as erosion control in Rivers State and borehole projects in Akwa Ibom.
Joshua Osiyemi, the Head of Tracka, emphasized the power of public vigilance in his conclusion: “If just 5 per cent of Nigerians engage in oversight, monitoring could reach 50 per cent, significantly reducing opportunities for corruption and greatly improving service delivery and quality of life across communities.”
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