***Ex-President accuses NASS of budget racketeering, extortion, self-enrichment
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has reignited debate over the integrity of Nigeria’s legislature with a blistering attack on lawmakers, accusing them of turning constituency projects into a racket for personal gain.
In his newly released book, Nigeria Past and Future: Contemplations on Nigeria’s History and Vision for Tomorrow, Obasanjo described constituency projects as nothing short of “daylight unarmed robbery,” insisting that those behind the practice “must be treated as criminals.”
The former leader, who governed Nigeria both as a military ruler and later as an elected president, said his experience dealing with legislators showed a disturbing pattern of corruption, manipulation, and constitutional breaches.
“Lawmakers of the Fourth Republic are much worse than their predecessors,” Obasanjo wrote. He accused them of distorting budgets, fixing their own salaries and allowances against the Constitution, watering down anti-graft legislation, and running oversight committees as extortion rackets.
He recalled how the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) bill was deliberately delayed for 18 months in the National Assembly because legislators feared its provisions would jail them after their tenure. “Some of them said that if they passed the bill as I had sent it, most of them would go to jail,” he recounted. The law was eventually passed in a diluted form.
Obasanjo also pointed to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Act as another casualty of legislative compromise, alleging that some oil-producing states bribed lawmakers to exclude them from contributing to the Commission’s funding, leaving the federal government and oil companies to foot the bill.
Beyond legislative sabotage, Obasanjo accused lawmakers of turning budgets into tools for personal enrichment. “In their hunger for illegitimate money, the lawmakers devised what they called constituency projects… invariably, once such misconduct is allowed, the budget goes into deficit,” he said.
He further alleged that oversight committees are weaponised as cash cows. “They visit the projects of ministries and parastatals purely to collect money from them. It is shockingly bad,” he declared.
Describing Nigeria’s legislators as among the “highest paid in the developing world, and in some cases earning more than colleagues in advanced democracies,” Obasanjo said the greed of the National Assembly has badly undermined governance and development.
“When I was president, I refused to release funds I found unacceptable. On occasions, I was threatened with impeachment, which did not move me,” he wrote.
The former president’s fiery critique is already stirring reactions, rekindling debate over whether constituency projects — now entrenched in budget cycles — are genuine tools of development or, as Obasanjo insists, symbols of entrenched corruption.