The Federal Government has proposed N238.05 billion for a hospital under the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), FIJ can report.
This hospital allocation falls under the Service Wide Vote (SWV) section of the proposed 2025 budget.
While a single hospital gets N238 billion, the government allocated just N653 billion for capital projects in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. This means one agency, led by Mohammed Mohammed, is set to receive an N238 billion hospital facility, while over 200 million Nigerians will have to share N653 billion for health and social welfare capital projects.
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Nigeria’s health sector is already critically underfunded. In 2024, the country allocated just 5.4% of its budget to health, falling far short of the 15% benchmark set by African Union member states in the Abuja Declaration of 2001.
For 2025, the health sector’s share of the proposed N47.90 trillion budget is approximately N2.39 trillion, or 4.81%. This suggests a disproportionate distribution of the already inadequate funding to the sector.
Meanwhile, the Service Wide Vote, under which the NIA hospital allocation was made, has long been called out for its lack of transparency.
The fund, also known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund Charge, is managed directly by the presidency and has been described as unauditable.
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In 2021, former Senate Public Accounts Committee Chairman Mathew Uroghide referred to the SWV as the “biggest fraud” in Nigeria. He said that the budget under this section had never been audited, leaving its expenditures shrouded in secrecy.
“Standing committees of the Senate do not know anything about its spending,” Uroghide said.
As recently as November, the House of Representatives set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate alleged abuse of the SWV. They cited concerns over misallocation, mismanagement and corruption.
The proposed SWV allocation for 2025 is N6.74 trillion, a sharp increase from the N4 trillion allocated in 2024.
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