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A member of the House of Representatives, Yusuf Gagdi, has accused the Federal Government of failing to release capital funds for constituency projects, saying lawmakers have not received a single naira since the 2025 budget was passed.
Gagdi, who represents Pankshin/Kanke/Kanam Federal Constituency of Plateau State, made the remark during a town hall meeting with his constituents.
According to him, despite President Bola Tinubu’s decision to raise the constituency project allocation for lawmakers from ₦125 million to ₦1 billion each, no funds have been released so far.
“From January till now, no capital funds have been released to any legislator,” Gagdi said.
“Even projects that belong to the Federal Government itself have not been funded.”
He explained that lawmakers do not directly receive constituency funds, but are only given project allocations shared among all members from each state.
“There is no federal lawmaker that is given ₦1 billion cash. What we are given is an envelope for projects worth ₦1 billion to be shared among legislators in the state,” he said.
Gagdi added that in states like Plateau, the ₦1 billion project envelope is divided among eight lawmakers for about ₦125 million each while in states with more representatives, such as Kano, each legislator gets projects worth about ₦25 to ₦30 million.
The lawmaker lamented that despite the increase in project allocation announced by the president, the funds have remained on paper.
“When President Tinubu presented the 2025 budget, he increased our constituency intervention from ₦125 million to ₦1 billion each. For senators, he raised it to ₦2 billion. But up till this moment, nothing has been released,” he said.
Gagdi further revealed that President Tinubu recently told the Speaker of the House of Representatives that there was no money to fund the 2025 budget, leading to a reduction of lawmakers’ allocations by 50%.
“Last week, the President told the Speaker that there’s no money to prepare the 2025 budget. So, he asked the Speaker to inform us that our ₦1 billion projects have been cut down to ₦500 million,” Gagdi said.
Despite increasing constituency project funds to N1b, no kobo has been released – Gagdi laments
