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By Uche Usim
As Daily Sun beams searchlight on the 2026 budget details, strange allocations and duplicated deals stuffed in mystery vaults of various ministries, departments and agencies are being unearthed.
For instance, the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River in Enugu State (code 0215031001), whose primary duty is to provide cooperative education, training and entrepreneurial skills development for individuals and societies, is set to spend N4.788 billion on “Cholera outbreak medical intervention in selected communities and provision of solar water supply projects”, in Rivers state. Its total budget is N226.77 billion and it is an agency under the ministry of agriculture, not health.
Each of the identified cholera interventions have been apportioned exactly N266 million each and it is handling 18 of them.
Budget experts have described it as a significant budgetary anomaly and a worrying example of duplicated health spending through unrelated agencies.
“These repetitive line items for a medical crisis handled through an agricultural training college (rather than the Ministry of Health) represent a major budgetary anomaly and a prominent example of duplicated spending.
“From rice-buying culture institutes to classroom-building road safety officers, the 2026 budget is a multi-trillion naira shell game. Unfortunately, the Nigerian taxpayer is the one being left in the dark while the government leaves the lights on for the sleaze to linger.
“Just look at NALDA, the land development authority. It has ditched the tractors to build churches and mosques in Gombe for N350 million. Not to be left behind, the National Productivity Centre has decided to build a central palace in Kogi for N210 million.
“But the real lunacy starts when agencies forget what their jobs are. The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), which is supposed to be looking at the stars, is remarkably grounded. They are blowing N350 million on fertiliser for farmers in Taraba and N1.12 billion on research grants for students in Singapore.
“We saw billions hidden under research and development. Even the National Productivity Centre is in on the act, hiding N107.2 billion, over 96% of its entire budget, under the same murky R&D heading.
“When health-related infrastructure and outreach projects are assigned to non-health agencies, which suggests a fragmentation of health priorities and the use of unrelated MDAs as vehicles for medical spending, you are actually making oversight very grueling.
“Timelines are not known. There is also the issue of expertise. How do you ensure accountability when everything looks like an approval of misplaced priorities and mandate misalignment?
“As a nation, we can’t develop well when the spending plan has become a world of duplicated deals and misplaced billions,” a budget expert told Daily Sun.
Aside from the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, the National Stored Products Research Institute, with code 0215050001, also under agriculture ministry, has one documented line item for a cholera outbreak medical intervention valued at N266 million specifically for the southern region of the Niger Delta.
In the 2026 budget, numerous agricultural bodies are managing massive health projects. The National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT) budgeted N3.5 billion for the construction and renovation of general hospitals in the South West and another N1.75 billion for rehabilitating health facilities.
The Federal College of Agriculture Ishiagu allocated N2.1 billion for an ultra-modern 50-bed hospital in Abia State and N700 million for dialysis machines and ambulances in Ekiti.
The National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM) earmarked N245 million for community health insurance and N210 million for maternal mortality reduction programmes in Bayelsa State.
