There has been long-standing debate about Nigeria’s high cost of governance. The World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update (NDU) heatmap, covering December 2022 to April 2025, shows the country firmly in the “red zone” for governance costs, with little change despite repeated reform pledges. In public discourse, this often translates into calls for slashing the budgets of the National Assembly and the Presidency. But a closer look at the 2024 budget reveals that such cuts, while symbolically powerful, would barely scratch the surface of Nigeria’s fiscal challenges.
“The real levers lie in reducing waste and duplication within MDAs, prioritising capital projects that deliver value, and addressing the elephant in the room: debt service, which consumes nearly a third of the budget before a single road is built or teacher is paid.”
The real cost drivers: MDAs, not politicians
The numbers tell a different story. In 2024, the National Assembly, the Presidency, and the Judiciary together approximately account for N990 billion, or just 3.41 percent of the N29 trillion national budget. By contrast, debt service alone takes up N8.27 trillion, or 28.52 percent. Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) account for the bulk of spending, N19.74 trillion, or 68.07 percent of the budget. Even if the budgets of the National Assembly, the Presidency, and the Judiciary were cut in half, the savings, N495 billion, would amount to just 1.7 percent of total spending. That’s equivalent to less than 1 percent of the health sector’s allocation for the year.
Within the MDAs, the largest costs are not in travel allowances or official cars, but in salaries and capital projects. Personnel and overhead costs alone consume N8.77 trillion, nearly 31 percent of the entire budget. Capital expenditure within MDAs is even larger, at N9.99 trillion, a massive 34.71 percent of total government spending.
Capital projects and the duplication problem
Beyond recurrent spending, MDAs are also expanding capital projects. Many ministries like Agric, Information, Digital economy and many more, are venturing into works and infrastructure, duplicating the responsibilities of the Federal Ministry of Works.
On the surface, ballooning capital expenditure may be exciting, but it seems it is now an avenue to syphon national cake, instead of executing needed infrastructure for the people. This is not different from the revelation made earlier this year by BudgIT when it stated that it uncovered N6.93 trillion worth of projects inserted by the National Assembly.
Streamlining MDAs, not token cuts, is the solution
This suggests that while reducing the cost of governance in its popular sense, targeting political office budgets, may win public approval, it is far from a silver bullet. The real levers lie in reducing waste and duplication within MDAs, prioritising capital projects that deliver value, and addressing the elephant in the room: debt service, which consumes nearly a third of the budget before a single road is built or teacher is paid. Without tackling these deeper issues, even the most dramatic cuts to governance costs will make little difference to Nigeria’s fiscal health.
Nigeria has attempted reform before. The 2011 Orosanyi Report recommended merging and rationalising MDAs to cut costs and improve efficiency. The Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, through his 2023 presidential manifesto promised to implement this report, which seeks to streamline all the duplicated MDAs into one. Until this is done, cutting the cost of governance will only be a lip service.
