Nigeria has lost more than N200 trillion in revenues in the last 10 years due to diversions, withholdings, and under remittances to the Federation Account, constitutional lawyer, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, has said.
By current estimates, he pointed out that Nigeria is losing up to N20 trillion every year in revenues that should be entering the Federation Account.
Besides, he said between 2023 and 2025 alone, Nigeria generated over N60 trillion in revenues and still borrowed aggressively to fund basic services.
Briefing newsmen on Wednesday, in Apapa, Lagos, Agbakoba, who is a senior lawyer at OAL Centre for Petroleum Governance and Regulatory and Policy Advisory Practice, blamed the leakages on absolute disregard to section 162 (1) of the constitution that stipulates that all revenues collected by the Federal Government shall be paid into the Federation Account
“The Federation shall maintain a special account to be called the Federation Account into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation. This is the law. But it is not being followed,” he said.
Agbakoba alleged that the scale of what has been diverted or withheld from the Federation Account is staggering.
“A FAAC investigation currently underway covers allegations of $42.37 billion, approximately N12.91 trillion, in under-remittances by NNPCL alone between 2011 and 2017,” he claimed.
“In 2025, over N14.94 trillion, nearly 40 percent of gross federation revenues for that year, was consumed by pre-remittance deductions. NNPCL remitted only N600 billion of N1.1 trillion due in 2024, withholding N500 billion.
“Across all federation revenue streams and across all the years of the Fourth Republic, the cumulative haemorrhage almost certainly runs into hundreds of trillions of naira.”
In his policy paper focusing on fiscal policy reform, Agbakoba said the solution to the revenue loss is to fully implement Section 162 by amending the constitution to make its obligations clear, binding, and enforceable.
Agbakoba proposed a constitutional amendment where all revenues accruing to the federation shall be paid into the Federation Account in gross without any deductions, costs, charges, or offsets of any nature prior to such payment.
“Nigeria has the resources not to be in this position. We do not need more oil. We do not need new taxes. We need a system that ensures what we already produce reaches the account we already have.
“This must become an election issue in 2027. Every presidential candidate must be asked, publicly and on the record, how they intend to resolve the Federation Account crisis. Every voter is a direct stakeholder in whether the revenues collected in their name reach the governments accountable to them. The question of the Federation Account is not a technocratic debate. It is a democratic one. It is about whose money this is and who is being held to account for it,” he added.
He recalled that in the time of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Minister of Finance, the Treasury Single Account (TSA) was created to consolidate government revenues.
“But the TSA is not Section 162. It was introduced by executive directive, not by law, and it does not have the constitutional force that section 162 carries. Leakages have continued,” he said.
