Public Money, Constitutional Responsibility and Nigeria’s Crisis of Priorities

One of the fundamental duties of any government is to uphold the rule of law. Officials take oaths to protect it. When the state itself becomes the habitual violator of the constitutional order it is sworn to defend, a quiet tragedy befalls the people. Nigeria finds itself in precisely this predicament.

The 2026 federal budget has once again illuminated the problem. Public accountability organisation Tracka, an initiative of BudgIT, revealed that the Appropriation Act earmarked approximately ₦8.05 billion for the construction, renovation and equipping of churches and mosques. Of this sum, roughly ₦1.91 billion was allocated to seven church-related projects and ₦6.14 billion to 52 mosque-related projects. Many of these line items sit inside the budgets of ministries, departments and agencies whose statutory mandates have nothing to do with religious affairs. One striking example is the ₦1 billion provision, under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, for the supply of musical and cultural equipment to churches in Bende Local Government Area of Abia State. Another is the appearance of mosque construction under an agricultural research institute in Zaria. These are not isolated curiosities; they form part of a broader pattern in which constituency projects of doubtful public value are inserted into the accounts of unrelated agencies.

Nigeria is a secular state. Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution is unambiguous: “The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.” Section 38 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Nothing in the constitutional architecture requires or authorises the federal government to build, renovate or equip places of worship. Faith communities are free to raise funds and construct their own facilities. When public money is diverted to that purpose especially through opaque insertions that obscure beneficiaries and implementation pathways the state steps outside its proper bounds.

The timing makes the expenditure still more difficult to defend. Nigeria carries one of the world’s largest populations of out-of-school children. Primary healthcare centres across much of the country remain under-equipped and under-staffed. Multidimensional poverty still affects tens of millions. Insecurity continues to claim lives and disrupt livelihoods, particularly in the North-East and other troubled regions. Fiscal space is constrained by a substantial budget deficit and persistent revenue shortfalls. In such circumstances, the decision to channel scarce resources into religious infrastructure rather than the foundational causes of insecurity, the rebuilding of public libraries, the strengthening of primary health systems, or the expansion of quality basic education represents a failure of prioritisation.

Equally troubling is the failure of oversight. Budget defence hearings and the work of the relevant National Assembly committees are meant to filter out precisely these kinds of insertions. That such provisions survived scrutiny raises legitimate questions about the effectiveness of legislative oversight and about the broader culture of budget padding. When lawmakers themselves become the principal architects of questionable constituency projects, the institution charged with protecting the public interest instead becomes complicit in its erosion.

This is not an argument against religion. Nigerians of every faith are entitled to worship freely and to support their places of worship. It is an argument for constitutional discipline and for a clearer hierarchy of public needs. Governments that treat the budget as a vehicle for political patronage rather than a tool of collective investment inevitably weaken the social contract. The result is a polity in which the law is observed selectively, accountability is episodic, and the dividends of democracy remain distant for ordinary citizens.

Restoring credibility requires more than rhetorical commitment. It demands transparent line-item disclosure, strict adherence to agency mandates, rigorous legislative scrutiny, and a resolute focus on the public goods that only the state can reliably provide security, education, health and infrastructure. Until those priorities govern the allocation of public funds, the spectacle of governments breaking the law they are sworn to uphold will continue and with it, the quiet tragedy of a people denied the full measure of accountable governance.

The country cannot continue this way. When government breaks the rules, it is supposed to enforce, the damage goes beyond money. It damages citizens’ faith in democracy itself. The time has come to stop asking merely, “What is in the budget? We must ask the harder question: “Who benefits, why does it matter, who approved it, and what will Nigerians receive in return?” That is not opposition politics. That is citizenship.

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