The major corruption allegations of the Tinubu years
By KIO AMACHREE
Note on method: This is a ledger of allegations, not a register of convictions. Every figure below is attributed to the person or body that made it, and every person named has denied wrongdoing unless stated otherwise. Where the numbers conflict, the conflict is reported. That is the point: three years into an administration that promised Renewed Hope, Nigerians still cannot get a straight answer on the money.
I. The Humanitarian Ministry: stealing in the name of the poor
The first scandal of the Tinubu era arrived within seven months of the inauguration. In January 2024 a leaked memo dated 20 December 2023, signed by Humanitarian Affairs Minister Dr Betta Edu, instructed the Accountant-General to pay ₦585,189,500 into the personal UBA account of one Oniyelu Bridget Mojisola, described as grants for vulnerable groups in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Lagos and Ogun. President Tinubu suspended Edu and referred her to the EFCC. She was questioned, released on bail and her passport seized. She denied wrongdoing.
Around her, the numbers grew. Halima Shehu, suspended head of the National Social Investment Programme Agency, was investigated over an alleged ₦44.8 billion diverted into private accounts; the EFCC said it recovered ₦39.8 billion. Edu’s Buhari-era predecessor, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, was questioned over ₦37.1 billion allegedly laundered through the ministry on her watch. Premium Times reports the EFCC said it had recovered ₦30 billion in its wider probe of the ministry.
No charge has ever been filed against Edu. In August 2026 President Tinubu appointed her Director of Women Mobilisation for his 2027 campaign. The ADC called the campaign council a “rehabilitation centre” for people carrying unresolved corruption questions and asked a simple question: if she was cleared, by whom, when, and how?
II. The refineries: $2.9 billion or $7.2 billion, and nothing works
The NNPC refinery rehabilitation is the largest single allegation in naira terms. Under Group CEO Mele Kyari, retained by Tinubu until April 2025, the Federal Executive Council approved $1.5 billion in 2021 for Port Harcourt, with $740.7 million later released for Kaduna and $657 million for Warri: a total the EFCC put at $2,956,872,622.36. None of the three refineries is producing.
In April 2025 the EFCC wrote to NNPC naming Kyari and thirteen other former executives in an investigation of abuse of office and misappropriation. Reports said roughly ₦80 billion was found in accounts linked to one sacked refinery managing director. By June 2025 the commission had arrested former NNPC Chief Financial Officer Umar Ajiya Isa in connection with what Premium Times described as an alleged $7.2 billion fraud spanning the three refineries’ turnaround maintenance. The gap between $2.9 billion and $7.2 billion has never been publicly reconciled. Kyari has said he is ready to give account of himself.
III. The Chagoury contracts: the $13 billion question
I have written before that the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway is the defining procurement of this presidency. It was awarded to Hitech Construction, founded by Gilbert Chagoury, without competitive bidding; Works Minister David Umahi admitted as much, saying Hitech was invited on the strength of its pedigree. Umahi puts the cost at ₦4 billion per kilometre, or ₦2.8 trillion for 700 km. Atiku Abubakar puts it at ₦8 billion per kilometre and ₦15.7 trillion overall. Independent estimates run to $11–13 billion. What is not disputed is that ₦1.06 trillion was released for a pilot section that begins at Eko Atlantic and ends at the Lekki Deep Sea Port, both in Lagos.
The conflict of interest is a matter of record. Seyi Tinubu, the President’s son, has been reported to sit on the board of a Chagoury company and to be a joint shareholder with Ronald Chagoury Jr in a British Virgin Islands entity. In January 2026 the President conferred the GCON, Nigeria’s second-highest honour, on Gilbert Chagoury. Two months later Chagoury travelled in the presidential delegation to London, where Nigeria signed a £746 million UK Export Finance-guaranteed loan for the Apapa and Tin Can ports. ITB Nigeria, another Chagoury company, is reported to be the primary contractor. At least £236 million is reserved for British suppliers. More than 150 days on, neither government has published the interest rate, the tenor or the loan agreement.
I have deliberately rejected the unverified $100 billion figure that circulates online. The documented Chagoury-linked awards, coastal highway, ports and the Kebbi section of Sokoto–Badagry, add up to roughly $13 billion. That figure is large enough. It does not need inflating.
IV. The Villa: the price of comfort during austerity
The administration that removed the fuel subsidy and asked Nigerians to endure hardship has, by its own budget documents, spent lavishly on itself. The 2023 supplementary budget contained ₦5.09 billion for a presidential yacht, listed under the Navy; the House of Representatives struck it out after public outrage. A new Airbus A330 was acquired in 2024 at a cost the President’s own defenders put at $150 million; Peter Obi says the true figure was ₦300 billion. Obi has also itemised ₦39 billion for refurbishing the National Conference Centre and ₦21 billion for rebuilding the Vice-President’s residence, money that would have bought some 400 ambulances.
Aso Rock has now been disconnected from the national grid after ₦10 billion in the 2025 budget and a further ₦7 billion in 2026 were spent on a private solar mini-grid, justified by an annual Villa power bill officials themselves put at ₦47 billion. Nigerians who sit in darkness may draw their own conclusions.
V. The budgets: padded, duplicated, and in one case fictitious
BudgIT found that the National Assembly inserted 11,122 projects worth ₦6.93 trillion into the ₦54.99 trillion 2025 budget, roughly 12.5 per cent of the total, including 1,477 streetlight projects worth ₦393 billion and 538 boreholes worth ₦114 billion. The Presidency, which signed the Act, said nothing.
The 2026 budget is worse. In July 2026 the Presidency was forced to describe the “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council” as a fictitious agency, after it was discovered the Appropriation Act had allocated it ₦1.3 billion. Tracka identified ₦962.83 billion for SUVs and “empowerment” spread across 78 MDAs, with 30 per cent of the 2,579 empowerment projects lacking any identifiable location. A BusinessDay investigation found ₦210 billion in overlapping and duplicated allocations. The Agriculture Ministry carries a single ₦252.2 billion “Research and Development” line with no breakdown. Seventy-three per cent of the FCT’s capital budget, ₦335 billion, goes to one district: Maitama.
Peter Obi, citing the IMF’s Article IV consultation, says ₦8.83 trillion of 2025 spending never appeared in the budget at all: money spent outside legislative oversight, exceeding the combined education and health allocations. The Presidency has not published a reconciliation.
VI. Rivers State: emergency rule and ₦302 billion in six months
When President Tinubu suspended Governor Fubara and installed Vice-Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas as sole administrator in March 2025, Rivers received no elected oversight for six months. Ibas presented a ₦1.48 trillion budget containing ₦24 billion for CCTV at Government House, ₦30 billion for gunboats and ₦23 billion for contingencies; the House of Representatives committee gave him 48 hours to justify them. Court filings in a SERAP freedom-of-information suit later disclosed that ₦302,352,458,523.07 was spent between March and August 2025, including transfers to Government House and NIP payments to individuals. Allegations of contract inflation approaching half a trillion naira were levelled and denied. The audit that should settle the matter has not been published.
VII. The FCT: a capital in debt and under water
Under Minister Nyesom Wike, the FCT received ₦432.13 billion in federal allocations between August 2023 and March 2026 and, according to reporting on its debt profile, moved from the ninth-least indebted sub-national to the second-most, adding ₦301.37 billion in liabilities. Critics, including FCT Senator Ireti Kingibe, blame the August 2026 floods on the sale of green areas and floodplains to developers in defiance of the master plan. Wike insists allocations follow investment criteria. The projects financed by the new borrowing, their cost and their tenor, remain undisclosed.
VIII. The campaign council: a who’s who of open files
The 2027 Presidential Campaign Council published in August 2026 reads like an EFCC docket. Beyond Edu: Ngozi Olejeme, arraigned in October 2025 on eight counts involving ₦1 billion and still on trial; Abdullahi Ganduje, facing an eight-count Kano State case alleging contractor kickbacks, with the 2018 dollar-counting video unresolved; Bello Matawalle, subject of an active EFCC probe into some ₦70 billion; Abdullahi Adamu, once charged on 149 counts involving ₦15 billion; Godswill Akpabio, scrutinised over more than ₦100 billion as Akwa Ibom governor though never charged; and Hadiza Bala-Usman, cleared of misappropriation but criticised over ₦165 billion in unremitted NPA surplus. Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame were convicted, then pardoned. All deny wrongdoing. The ADC’s verdict: under this government, corruption allegations have an expiry date.
IX. What Nigerians are owed
None of the above is a conviction. All of it is unanswered. The Kio Solution asks for nothing revolutionary:
1. Publish the coastal highway and ports contracts, and the £746 million loan agreement, in full.
2. Publish the EFCC’s findings on the Humanitarian Ministry and the refineries, and either charge or clear the named individuals.
3. Reconcile the ₦8.83 trillion the IMF says was spent outside the budget.
4. Commission and publish an independent audit of the Rivers emergency administration.
5. Explain how a fictitious agency entered the Appropriation Act, and who signed off on it.
A government confident of its integrity would do all five before the campaign starts. Silence is also an answer.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians.
