No government in the history of Nigeria has reveled in cronyism than the present administration. The long-term economic consequences of prioritizing cronyism over competitive, sustainable development are terrifyingly real. Mega-projects executed without rigorous public oversight, comprehensive environmental impact assessments, or independent cost audits are notoriously vulnerable to extreme inflation and systemic waste. Disturbingly, these multi-trillion naira deals are undertaken in a country already suffocating under a mountain of domestic and foreign debts.
By Promise Adiele
Nigeria is subliminally going through perilous times. Unfortunately, the factors responsible for these conditions are dangerously explained away politically. The people are hit by mute paralysis and no one is talking. As Nigeria’s literary deity Chinua Achebe points out in Things Fall Apart “they have put a knife in the thing that held us together and we have fallen apart”. Nigerians no longer abhor evil, challenge executive rascality, or the different shades of irresponsibility in the corridors of power. Anyone who asks simple questions of accountability is branded an opposition and an enemy of the state. Anyone who identifies the degenerate conditions in the country is marked for attacks. Anyone who demands accountability from President Bola Tinubu is immediately hounded as an opposition.
Support for Tinubu’s re-election has blindfolded many people, plunging them into the abyss of official myopia – they no longer see or feel evil in the corridors of power. We cannot speak with one voice anymore even when our country is repeatedly raped before us. For politics, some people have mastered the art of rationalizing the mindless plundering of our collective patrimony – no questions, no engagements – let the country burn to blazes as long as Tinubu is re-elected. But questions must be asked and the government must be held accountable. That is the hallmark of an enlightened populace.
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Recently, The Economist, a London based newspaper founded in 1843, in a report titled “Nigeria’s builder-in-chief” detailed how French businessman and a close ally to President Bola Tinubu, Mr. Gilbert Chagoury was awarded $20 billion in contracts and projects. $20 billion is approximately N27 trillion naira which is about 74% of Nigeria’s 2024 entire budget. The Economist has over the years built a reputation for investigative journalism and objective, non-hysterical reporting. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate in the 2027 general election, Atiku Abubakar, has called on President Bola Tinubu to explain the allegation from The Economist.
As always, Mr. President has ignored the call but rather would prefer to speak through his cantankerous media aides. Ordinarily, Nigerians should question the presidency about the transparency and bidding process of these contracts. Surely, Nigerians deserve to know. Regrettably, the presidency seems to have taken Nigerians for granted while expending mind-boggling amount of the country’s limited resources on inscrutable projects and contracts. Under Goodluck Jonathan, the country would have caught fire following this kind of scandal but under Bola Tinubu, Nigerians seem to be victims of inexplicable paralysis, caught in the middle by a hypnotic spirit that prevents them from asking basic questions of accountability.
The allocation of approximately 27 trillion naira in single-source infrastructure contracts and projects to businesses tied to French prominent billionaire Gilbert Chagoury represents a catastrophic assault on public trust and fiscal sanity. If the presidency does not respond to this allegation satisfactory, it is an impeachable offence even if Nigerians know that the current National Assembly is crippled and indolent. This marks the highest rape of the country’s exchequer reminiscent of Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock. The unmitigated assault on the country’s meagre resources by the government conveys what many critics have termed fiscal irresponsibility especially given the anemic economic conditions in the air.
For context, Nigeria’s entire 2024 federal budget stands at 28.7 trillion naira. Funnelling the equivalent of roughly 74% of the entire nation’s annual budget into the hands of a single well-connected individual is an unprecedented abuse of state resources. This staggering sum, estimated globally around $20 billion, has reportedly been committed across mega-projects like the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway and massive port renovations without the stabilizing benefit of competitive public bidding. In a democratic republic, the national treasury must function as a tool for public empowerment, not a closed-loop investment portfolio for personal friends and political allies. Surely, The Economist, like many foreign news outlets, knows what many Nigerians do not know and therefore cannot be wrong.
This flagrant assault on the country’s economy is more disconcerting because it is happening at a time of unparalleled economic misery for the average citizen. That is why many people think that all the rhetoric of economic revival is political, insincere commentary to delude the public and mislead people with little intelligence. But the informed and enlightened minds in the country are aware that the economy continues on a misdirected path daily. Every day, the government superficially encourages ordinary Nigerians to tighten their belts, endure soaring fuel prices, navigate hyperinflation, and pay higher taxes under the guise of patriotic sacrifice. Yet, while families are forced to skip meals and businesses collapse under the weight of an agonizing economic climate, the political elite appears to be loosening the strings of the treasury for those inside the president’s immediate social circle.
Nigerians are daily regaled with bogus economic statistics that do not translate in the quality of life of ordinary people. Preaching austerity to a hungry populace while simultaneously awarding multi-trillion naira deals to a long-time companion is the ultimate display of political tone-deafness. It sends a clear and damaging message that the hardships of economic reform are meant solely for the poor, while the massive financial rewards remain strictly reserved for the powerful. $20 billion is a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. It is unjustifiable that in a country where 140 million of the citizens are multi-dimensionally poor, the president would outsource that kind of money to a close business associate through an obscure, illegitimate process.
The absolute lack of transparency surrounding these colossal awards of contracts undermines the very foundation of Nigeria’s public procurement laws. Perhaps, the presidency is not aware of this fact. The Public Procurement Act exists precisely to prevent this brand of insider dominance, mandating open competitive bidding to ensure that taxpayers get the highest value for every naira spent. By bypassing competitive tenders and directly allocating these contracts, the presidency has completely subverted statutory checks and balances and therefore betray the trust of millions of Nigerians. Directly speaking, this borders on abuse of office and in a democracy, it is an impeachable offence.
Civil society organizations and international observers are rightly alarmed by the opacity of these arrangements, which have effectively transformed critical national infrastructure into a private fiefdom. When single-source contracts approach the scale of a whole national budget, the government owes the public a detailed, itemized breakdown of costs, timelines, and beneficial ownership structures rather than aggressive media deflections. Indeed, Nigeria’s economy is suffocating under the present administration for obvious reasons. This kind of brazen onslaught on the country’s purse has all the potential of military government. But we claim to be in a democracy, a caricature of democracy maybe. The country bleeds, a few people enjoy and the masses suffer untold evisceration. That is the Nigerian story in the last three years.
This scenario presents a profound and unavoidable conflict of interest that tarnishes Nigeria’s international credibility. Public records indicate that members of the president’s immediate family maintain active business ties and board positions within corporate entities directly tied to the Gilbert Chagoury conglomerate. This structural overlap deeply implicates public governance and private family enterprise. When Seyi Tinubu, the president’s son sits on the board of a subsidiary linked to the ultimate beneficiary of these massive state contracts, it removes all pretenses of an arms-length transaction. Instead of fostering a competitive, merit-based economy that attracts genuine foreign direct investment, this administration is signalling to the global financial community that political proximity is the ultimate requirement for doing business in Nigeria.
No government in the history of Nigeria has reveled in cronyism than the present administration. The long-term economic consequences of prioritizing cronyism over competitive, sustainable development are terrifyingly real. Mega-projects executed without rigorous public oversight, comprehensive environmental impact assessments, or independent cost audits are notoriously vulnerable to extreme inflation and systemic waste. Disturbingly, these multi-trillion naira deals are undertaken in a country already suffocating under a mountain of domestic and foreign debts. Nigeria cannot afford to mortgage its future or sink deeper into predatory borrowing simply to fund legacy projects designed by and for a closed circle of billionaires. Valuable resources that should be aggressively deployed toward urgent sectors like public healthcare, primary education, rural grid expansion, and agricultural security are instead being hoarded to finance massive coastal corridors that bear no direct benefits to the masses.
Ultimately, Nigeria belongs to its citizens, not to an elite network of friends and business associates and President Bola Tinubu must understand this fact. The concentration of 27 trillion-naira worth of public infrastructure under a single preferred billionaire associate is an existential threat to fiscal responsibility and public morale. This administration must urgently reverse course, halt the direct allocation of un-tendered mega-contracts, and subject every single phase of these massive infrastructure developments to independent, international auditing, and open competitive bidding. True economic reform cannot be built on a foundation of systemic favoritism and corporate capture. If the government genuinely expects Nigerians to believe in its vision of shared national sacrifice, it must immediately demonstrate that the federal budget is a blueprint for national development rather than an exclusive corporate gift to its closest friends.
