The Lagos State House of Assembly has approved ₦6.2 billion in its 2025 budget for the purchase of 40 residential properties in Lagos or Abuja — an allocation that would see each of its lawmakers receive a house valued at about ₦155 million.
According to the Assembly’s second-quarter budget performance report, ₦1 billion of the sum — about 16% — had already been spent by June. With 40 members in the chamber, the appropriation is widely seen as a farewell package for every legislator.
This is not the first time such provisions have appeared in the Assembly’s budgets. In 2024, lawmakers raised the housing vote from ₦1.22 billion to ₦6.2 billion, though only ₦126 million was eventually spent. A year earlier, over ₦1.1 billion of a ₦1.22 billion allocation was disbursed, but it remains unclear whether the beneficiaries were members of the ninth Assembly, which concluded in 2023.
The legality of the arrangement is now under the spotlight. Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, in Section 124(5), empowers state assemblies to legislate pensions or gratuities for governors and their deputies, but it does not extend this privilege to legislators.
Similar controversies have played out in other states. In 2019, then-Bayelsa governor Seriake Dickson rejected a “life pension” bill for lawmakers, arguing assemblies could set pension rates but not create new categories of beneficiaries. More recently, Abia and Benue scrapped pension laws that had offered generous perks to former governors.
Lagos itself has faced criticism over political entitlements. In 2021, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu promised to abolish the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law, which guaranteed benefits for ex-governors and deputies. The Assembly, however, chose instead to reduce the entitlements by 50 percent rather than repeal them entirely.
