Former Vice‑President Atiku Abubakar has slammed the 2026 Appropriation Act for routing N1.08 trillion to the Federal Cooperative College, Oji River, Enugu State — calling it a “fraud on Nigerians.”
His criticism followed an independent analysis of the 2026 budget by civic group Tracka, which found the college listed as the executing agency for 2,791 capital projects across the 36 states and the FCT.
In a statement on Tuesday by his media aide, Phrank Shaibu, the former vice‑president commended Tracka for exposing what he called one of the most troubling cases of budget distortion under President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Atiku said the move is especially striking as the Federal Government asks Nigerians to accept economic reforms, higher taxes and rising public debt as necessary. “Nothing exposes the hollowness of that claim more than a budget that turns a federal cooperative college into one of Nigeria’s largest project-implementing agencies,” he said.
The ADC presidential candidate said the allocation raises big questions about the budget’s credibility. He said it’s hard to see how a school for cooperative education could suddenly be tasked with roads, drainage, solar streetlights, markets, football pitches, dialysis centres, ambulances, water schemes, recycling plants and empowerment programmes nationwide.
“Who decided that a cooperative college should become one of Nigeria’s biggest ministries by stealth? Under what law was it transformed into the implementing agency for 2,791 projects? Who nominated these projects, who approved them, who will supervise them, and who will be held accountable?” Atiku queried.
He added that the revelations undercut the Tinubu administration’s claims of fiscal discipline. “This government operates a medieval financial system in which the national treasury is treated as the personal purse of the ruler—available to be spent, diverted or dispensed at will, with little regard for transparency, accountability or the public interest. In a constitutional democracy, however, the treasury belongs to the Nigerian people, not to the President or his cronies,” he said.
Atiku also questioned policy coherence, noting the government has removed fuel subsidies, hiked taxes and taken on debt, yet appears to channel huge sums through an institution without the mandate or capacity to manage them. “A government that says there is no money, removes fuel subsidy, raises taxes, accumulates unprecedented debt and demands endless sacrifices from Nigerians cannot simultaneously operate a budget that appears designed to hide public spending behind institutions with neither the statutory mandate nor the institutional capacity to execute projects of this magnitude,” he stated.
He concluded: “A government that plans to spend N1.08 trillion through a cooperative college cannot claim to be fighting waste or promoting fiscal discipline. It looks less like governance and more like a blueprint to defraud Nigerians.”
