2025 budget: Lagos govt earmarks N9 billion for lawmakers’ vehicles, zero for education

The Lagos State Government’s 2025 budget has come under scrutiny after a report revealed that N9 billion was allocated solely for purchasing backup utility vehicles for the state’s lawmakers, while critical sectors like education received little to no funding.

According to the 2024 Third Quarter (Q3) budget performance report, the Sanwo-Olu-led government spent N9 billion in Q3 alone on providing official vehicles for 40 members of the Lagos State House of Assembly.

The expenditure represents a significant portion of the state’s spending, with N13.33 billion spent from January to September 2024 on the vehicles, accounting for 32.8% of the Assembly’s total budget allocation.

According to Sahara Reporters, in stark contrast, essential education projects, including the renovation of vocational centres in Badagry and Sabo, as well as the upgrading of facilities at Lagos State University (LASU), received no funding during the same period.

The report revealed that despite the state’s budgetary allocations of N191 million and N8.57 billion respectively for the projects, no funds were disbursed to the educational institutions in the first three quarters of the year.

Educational projects, such as the accreditation programs for LASU and Lagos State College of Health Technology, also went unfunded, according to the report.

“Similarly, Lagos State University (LASU), according to the budget performance report, got N8,570,966,760.50 in the original budget and N1,070,966,760.50 in the revised budget for renovation/upgrading of university buildings which includes Senate, library, faculty of management science, etc. but received zero funding from the state government between Q1 and Q3.

“Also, the state-owned university got the sum of N824,661,345 in the state’s 2024 original and revised budget for the year 2023 accreditation exercise but no funds were released for the exercise.

In the same vein, the Lagos State College of Health Technology got a budgetary allocation of N200 million in the original and revised budget of the state for an accreditation programme but received zero funding from the state government in Q1, Q2 and Q3,” the report stated.