The administration of President Bola Tinubu has spent ₦5 billion in public funds to renovate the official residence of Vice President Kashim Shettima in Lagos. This was revealed through data from GovSpend, a civic tech platform that tracks government expenditures in Nigeria.
The renovation costs, amounting to ₦5,034,077,063, were spread across May and September 2024. In May, the State House paid ₦2.83 billion to Denderi Investment Limited, an engineering firm, for work on the vice president’s Lagos quarters. In September, two separate payments were made, totaling over ₦2.2 billion for further refurbishments and Phase 2 of the renovation.
In addition to this, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration disclosed plans to allocate ₦15 billion for a new official residence for the vice president in Abuja, a project that has sparked significant public outrage.
Organizations like the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) have condemned these expenses, calling them a violation of Nigeria’s constitutional and anti-corruption commitments. SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, argued that it would be an abuse of public trust to approve such spending while the country faces a crippling debt burden, with N8.25 trillion of Nigeria’s ₦27.5 trillion 2024 budget earmarked for debt servicing.
Critics, including Auwal Rafsanjani from the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre and Debo Adeniran from the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, have expressed concerns that this reflects the government’s failure to reduce the cost of governance, as promised, and called for stronger regulation of government spending.
