Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu of overstepping constitutional boundaries by funding palace construction and renovation for traditional rulers through the federal budget, calling the N22.15 billion set aside for 106 such projects in the 2026 Appropriation Act a constitutional aberration that opens the door to illegality and corruption.
In a statement issued Thursday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the ADC presidential candidate argued that Nigeria’s Constitution draws clear lines around which level of government handles which responsibilities, and nowhere does it grant the Federal Government authority over building or renovating palaces belonging to traditional institutions. He insisted that Tinubu’s oath was to protect the Constitution as written, not to reshape it through budgetary maneuvering, stressing that traditional institutions fall squarely within the jurisdiction of state and local governments.
Atiku framed his challenge to the administration in blunt terms, asking under which constitutional provision the Federal Government could justify pulling N22.15 billion from the Federation Account for palace projects, and questioning openly which version of the Constitution the president believes he is operating under.
He went further into the specifics of what the 1999 Constitution actually permits, noting that its only mention of traditional institutions appears in the Third Schedule, Part II, where states are allowed to form a Council of Chiefs to advise governors on chieftaincy and customary law matters. Beyond that narrow advisory function, he said, the Constitution deliberately leaves the creation, administration and funding of traditional institutions to individual states and their Houses of Assembly, meaning no Appropriation Act can lawfully hand the Federal Government powers the Constitution withheld from it in the first place.
Beyond the constitutional question, Atiku pointed to a second layer of concern, the government’s refusal to disclose which traditional rulers are involved, where the palace projects are located, or which communities stand to benefit. He described this lack of transparency as effectively handing out a blank cheque for corruption, one that breeds legitimate suspicion that some of these projects may exist only on paper, with the traditional rulers named in the budget never actually seeing any benefit.
For Atiku, the issue extends beyond mere bookkeeping. He characterized a national budget as a moral and constitutional document that reveals a government’s true priorities, arguing that Nigeria’s traditional rulers deserve better than being used as cover for opaque and constitutionally dubious spending. He suggested that if the administration genuinely respected traditional institutions, it would have nothing to hide.
He called on the Presidency, the Budget Office and all relevant ministries, departments and agencies to publish the full list of the 106 palace projects, including their exact locations, the funding allocated to each, the constitutional justification for the expenditure and details of the procurement process that will govern how contracts are awarded.
Atiku closed with a pointed warning, insisting that the national treasury does not belong to any private interest and that an Appropriation Act cannot be treated as license to bypass the Constitution, declaring that no government can claim to respect the rule of law while spending public funds on projects it has no constitutional authority to undertake and whose intended beneficiaries it refuses to name.
