Nigeria is a federation in name, but under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it is beginning to look like a country governed from one city, for one city, and in the image of one city. What is unfolding before our eyes is not announced, not debated, and not legislated—but it is real. By policy choices, budget priorities, and institutional drift, Lagos is being rebuilt as Nigeria’s de facto administrative–economic capital, while vast swathes of the country are left to decay.
FAAN.
CBN (key departments).
BOI.
NPA.
NIMASA.
These are not minor agencies. They are the command centres of aviation, finance, industry, ports, and maritime regulation. When such institutions either move their headquarters to Lagos or concentrate their real power there, the question practically asks itself: if power, money, and decision-making all live in Lagos, what exactly is Abuja for—and what is left for the rest of Nigeria?
Lagos First, Lagos Always
Let us begin with the facts.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has formally relocated its headquarters from Abuja to Lagos. The justification offered was “operational efficiency” because Lagos handles the bulk of air traffic. Yet Abuja remains the constitutional seat of government. No constitutional amendment was sought. No national debate was held. A major federal institution simply packed up and moved.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, officially headquartered in Abuja, has quietly transferred some of its most powerful departments—Banking Supervision, Payments System Management, Consumer Protection, Financial Policy and Regulation—to Lagos. Anyone who understands how banking regulation works knows the truth: where supervision sits, power sits. Abuja may keep the signage, but Lagos now holds the nerve centre.
The Bank of Industry has received Federal Executive Council approval for a new headquarters in Eko Atlantic City, Lagos, effectively relocating its functional command base from Abuja. A development finance institution, meant to catalyse industrial growth across Nigeria, is now planting its flag in one of the most exclusive real-estate enclaves in Africa.
The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and NIMASA, though nominally federal, have long operated as Lagos-centric agencies. Under Tinubu, this imbalance has not been corrected—it has been reinforced.
Piece by piece, institution by institution, Lagos is being reassembled as Nigeria’s true capital—without Nigerians ever being asked.
The Trillion-Naira Smoking Gun
If the institutional drift raises suspicion, the budgetary figures remove all doubt.
Consider the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, a flagship federal project championed by the Tinubu administration. The road, stretching roughly 700 kilometres, has been reported in multiple credible sources as costing between ₦14 trillion and ₦15 trillion when completed. Even the first tranche alone approved by the Federal Executive Council—₦1.334 trillion for about 130 kilometres—is staggering.
Now place that figure beside the reality of northern Nigeria.
According to compiled 2025 approved state budgets:
Yobe State: ₦320.8 billion
Gombe State: under ₦500 billion
Taraba State: under ₦500 billion
Nasarawa State: under ₦500 billion
Adamawa State: under ₦500 billion
Seven of the ten states with the smallest budgets in Nigeria are in the North. The combined budgets of the ten lowest-spending states nationwide amount to about ₦4.2 trillion.
Let that sink in.
A single federal road corridor, anchored in Lagos and running along the coast, is projected to cost over three times the combined annual budgets of ten Nigerian states, most of them northern. Even the ₦1.334 trillion first phase alone is larger than the entire annual budget of multiple northern states.
This is not development.
This is concentration.
The North Bleeds, Lagos Builds
While trillions flow southward into concrete, glass, and coastal highways, the North is bleeding.
Insurgency and banditry continue to cripple the North-East and North-West.
According to displacement tracking data, millions of Nigerians remain internally displaced, with the highest concentration in northern states.
Poverty indices consistently show the highest multidimensional poverty rates in the North.
Literacy figures reveal a scandalous educational divide, with some northern states recording single-digit literacy rates, while parts of the South approach near-universal literacy.
These are not abstract statistics. They translate into:
children out of school,
communities cut off by insecurity,
markets unable to function,
states trapped in survival mode.
And yet, when the Tinubu administration reaches for its biggest chequebook, it reaches—not northward—but towards Lagos.
Lagos Is Not the Problem—Policy Is
Let this be clear: Lagos is not the enemy. Lagos is industrious, vibrant, and economically vital. But no federation survives when one city becomes the gravitational centre of everything—capital, institutions, infrastructure, and influence—while others are treated as afterthoughts.
Abuja was created to prevent exactly this outcome. It was meant to neutralise regional dominance, balance power, and symbolise national ownership. What Tinubu’s Lagos-centric governance does is quietly undo the philosophy of the Nigerian federation, not by law, but by practice.
A federation does not collapse only through coups or constitutions. Sometimes it collapses through budget lines, headquarters relocations, and silent administrative decisions.
A Dangerous Signal
To the North, the message is clear: endure insecurity and poverty while watching national wealth pass you by.
To the South-East, already starved of federal presence, the message is familiar: you are not a priority.
To the South-South, the resource zone of the federation, the message is bitterly ironic: your oil may fund the centre, but the centre lives elsewhere.
And to Lagos, the message is unmistakable: you are the centre of the republic.
The Question Tinubu Must Answer
President Tinubu owes Nigerians an answer—not rhetoric, not slogans, but an answer grounded in policy logic:
Is Nigeria still a federation, or is it being reorganised around Lagos by stealth?
Because when:
federal agencies move,
regulatory power relocates,
development banks follow,
and trillions in infrastructure spending cluster in one axis,
then what is happening is not accidental.
It is a choice.
And that choice, left unchecked, risks turning Nigeria into a country where citizenship depends on geography, and national unity becomes a slogan rather than a lived reality.
History has shown—again and again—that nations do not fracture only from rebellion. Sometimes, they fracture from neglect dressed up as efficiency.
Nigeria should be careful.
Bello Doka can be reached at [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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