₦100 Billion Constituency Projects Under Scrutiny: Gaps, Duplications, and Questions of Transparency in Nigeria’s 2024 ZIPs

A critical review of Nigeria’s 2024 Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPs) has revealed alarming patterns of duplication, poor planning, and opaque spending across 13 states, raising concerns about accountability in how ₦100 billion worth of constituency projects are implemented.

The analysis covers projects executed in 2024 across Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara states along with several unnamed locations where ZIPs remain vague in scope and structure.

Authored by Uadamen Ilevbaoje, founder of Follow The Money initiative Monitng, the report shows that projects designed to bring development to grassroots communities instead expose flaws in Nigeria’s budget execution process.

These projects, commonly known as constituency projects, span key sectors such as agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, empowerment, and water resources.

Agriculture receives the highest funding share in many states, mainly through irrigation, training programs, and farm input distribution.

Education efforts include classroom construction and distribution of learning materials. Several infrastructure projects involve boreholes, solar-powered streetlights, and road rehabilitation. Empowerment schemes, particularly targeting women and youth, include vocational training and distribution of unspecified “empowerment items.”

Yet beneath these headlines lies a system riddled with inefficiencies. Several states such as Akwa Ibom and Abia feature repeated or vague projects, like fishery programs and an ₦1.8 billion judicial complex, respectively, that raise cost and impact concerns.

In northern states like Sokoto, Taraba, and Zamfara, ZIP budgets are significantly lower between ₦1.3 billion and ₦2 billion despite greater development needs.

A troubling pattern emerges from projects with ambiguous scopes, overlapping purposes, and unnamed beneficiaries. For instance, a ₦750 million transport project with no stated location highlights transparency lapses.

Additionally, many initiatives are handed to agencies that lack the technical capacity for execution such as agricultural bodies managing construction contracts further complicating accountability.

ZIPs were introduced as mechanisms to fast-track development through lawmakers’ direct intervention in their constituencies. However, the lack of proper oversight, duplication of efforts, and a tendency to prioritize new projects over existing ones cast doubt on their true impact.

Ilevbaoje warns that without structural reform, ZIPs could devolve into political patronage tools instead of addressing Nigeria’s urgent grassroots development needs.