₦212 Million for a Borehole: Inside the National Assembly's ₦114.53 Billion Water Insertion

July 17, 2026

IKOMENTS — ACCOUNTABILITY WATCH

A single line item, multiplied 538 times, tells you almost everything about how Nigeria's budget insertion economy actually works.

By Christian Hike · Ikoments

In the 2025 federal budget signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on February 28, 2025, the National Assembly inserted 538 borehole projects at a combined cost of ₦114.53 billion. Divide one figure by the other, and a single fact emerges that should trouble every Nigerian who has ever paid for a borehole in their own community: the average unit cost comes to ₦212.88 million.

For context, drilling a borehole in Nigeria typically costs between ₦500,000 and ₦3 million, depending on depth, geology, and location. Even at the very top of that range, in the most difficult terrain, with the most elaborate solar-powered pumping system attached, the federal figure represents a markup of roughly 70 to 425 times the going market rate.

The Number Behind the Number

This is not an isolated anomaly. It sits inside a much larger pattern documented by BudgIT, the civic-tech budget transparency organisation, in an 18-page report titled "Insertions by the National Assembly in the 2025 Budget." BudgIT found that lawmakers inserted 11,122 projects worth ₦6.93 trillion into the budget after the executive's proposal had already been submitted — representing 12.5% of the entire ₦54.99 trillion approved budget.

The boreholes did not travel alone. They arrived in the company of:

1,477 streetlights worth ₦393.29 billion — ₦266.1 million each
2,122 ICT-related projects worth ₦505.79 billion — roughly ₦238.3 million each
43 community town halls worth ₦17.23 billion — ₦401 million each
₦6.74 billion earmarked for the "empowerment of traditional rulers"

Taken together, these categories form what BudgIT calls a pattern of insertions that "appear tailored to satisfy narrow political interests and personal gains rather than the citizens' interests." Of the 11,122 inserted projects, 3,573 were routed directly into federal constituencies and 1,972 into senatorial districts — the classic architecture of constituency project spending, where a lawmaker's discretionary allocation is dressed up as a line item for infrastructure that, on paper, no single office is required to account for once the money is released.

Why the Multiplier Matters More Than the Total

It is tempting to fixate on the trillion-naira headline figure and lose the more damning detail hiding inside it. ₦6.93 trillion is abstract. Most people cannot hold a number that size in their head long enough to feel it. But everyone in Akwa Ibom, in Etinan, in any LGA with a borehole in front of a primary school, knows roughly what one costs to drill. That is what makes the ₦212.88 million figure so useful as an accountability tool: it is not an allegation, it is arithmetic. BudgIT divided the total by the unit count. The government has not disputed the total. The government has not disputed the unit count. What remains unexplained is the multiplier.

BudgIT's report notes something else worth sitting with: unofficial estimates suggest senators receive roughly ₦1 billion and House members roughly ₦2 billion each for constituency projects — yet the organisation's line-by-line analysis of actual insertions shows allocations "often significantly higher" than those figures. If that holds, the boreholes are not simply overpriced. They may be one of several vehicles through which discretionary allocations substantially exceed even the unofficial ceilings lawmakers are believed to operate under.

What Accountability Actually Requires Here

BudgIT's own recommendations are worth restating, because they move past outrage into mechanism. First, a definitive judicial ruling is needed on whether the National Assembly's constitutional appropriation power extends to unilaterally inserting new capital projects without executive involvement — an ambiguity the Attorney General could resolve by approaching the Supreme Court directly. Second, the EFCC and ICPC need to treat budget-padding at this scale as a live prosecutorial question, not a recurring news cycle. Third, citizens and civil society need a formal seat at the appropriation stage itself, before insertions are signed into law, not after.

Until one of those three things happens, the borehole will keep doing what it has always done in Nigerian budget politics: sit quietly in an appendix, cost 70 to 400 times what it should, and never quite rise to the level of scandal that a trillion-naira headline number commands — even though, line by line, it is the clearest evidence of the problem we have.

Source: BudgIT, "Insertions by the National Assembly in the 2025 Budget" (May 2025). Figures independently corroborated by reporting from The Guardian, ThisDay, Punch, and Daily Trust, and cross-verified by independent per-unit cost analysis.

Ikoments