By Mohammed Bello Doka
Nigeria’s 2024 federal budget was anointed with numbers that, on paper, map national priorities. The federal appropriation approved for the year totaled about ₦28.78 trillion. Of that, the sums earmarked for four of the country’s most vital public functions — defence and security, health, education, and agriculture — combine to roughly ₦7.1 trillion. Against that backdrop a single line in the audited accounts of the nation’s state oil company — Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited — that records ₦17.5 trillion for “pipeline protection / energy security” in 2024 reads not like accounting but like a provocation.
This is not a matter of numbers alone. It is a constitutional, fiscal and moral emergency. If the ₦17.5 trillion figure is literal cash paid to contractors for guarding pipelines, then Nigeria has run a security model so inverted it amounts to national self-sabotage. If the figure is an accounting bundle — a ledger of under-recoveries, receivables, exchange adjustments and repair claims dressed up as “security” — then the public has been misled and the state’s fiscal governance is hollowed out by smoke and mirrors. Either way, the central demand is simple and unambiguous: publish the receipts. Name the beneficiaries. Show the contracts.
Put the official numbers on the table first
To be explicit and leave no room for deniability:
Total federal budget (2024, approved): ≈ ₦28.78 trillion.
Defence & security (budgeted for 2024): ≈ ₦3.2–₦3.85 trillion (the sectoral allocations reported varied slightly among trackers and include ministry, personnel and capital votes).
Health (2024 allocation): ≈ ₦1.23–₦1.50 trillion.
Education (2024 allocation): ≈ ₦1.9–₦2.0 trillion.
Agriculture (2024 allocation): ≈ ₦362.9 billion.
Add those four sectors together and you get roughly ₦7.1 trillion — money meant to fund the state’s capacity to defend its citizens, keep them healthy, educate its young and feed the nation. Now note this, also drawn from official (albeit frustratingly opaque) NNPC disclosures: ₦17.5 trillion recorded in 2024 for pipeline protection and related energy-security costs. One figure is the sum of years, institutions and citizens’ lifelines. The other is a single, unexplained corporate ledger entry.
What NNPC actually recorded — and what it didn’t say
The wording in the audited accounts matters: “energy-security costs,” “pipeline surveillance and protection,” “advance payments,” and “under-recovery” appear as headings. But these headings are not the same as a schedule of cash paid to named contractors. The accounts reveal an aggregate, not an itemised list. They show a gargantuan figure. They do not show the chain of custody for the money. They do not say which companies, which agencies, which months, or which bank accounts. They do not supply copies of contracts, invoices, or proof of service.
It is worth repeating exactly why that omission is not a clerical quibble. Nigeria’s constitution assigns the responsibility to state security agencies to protect lives, property and national assets — that includes oil infrastructure. Yet, while those agencies were budgeted (even if poorly funded in release terms), a corporate account claims a spending level that dwarfs what the state itself formally set aside to pay those guardians. That mismatch cannot be shrugged off as “internal accounting.” It is a direct challenge to constitutional norms and oversight.
Who protects our pipelines — and who has been named in the past?
Pipeline protection in practice is often delivered by private security firms, community vigilance arrangements, and, at times, with support from statutory agencies. Public reporting and investigative pieces consistently point to the rise of private surveillance companies in the Niger Delta after years of vandalism and theft reduced production. One of the better-known names repeatedly linked in previous years to major pipeline surveillance contracts is Tantita Security Services Limited. But even where a company name appears in press pages, transparency stalls: amounts, contract methods, oversight clauses and duration are still frequently missing from public record.
Even more alarming: the ₦17.5 trillion figure in the NNPC ledger includes elements that outside auditors and opposition politicians say cannot be reconciled with normal security contracting. The sum reportedly encompasses under-recovery claims and receivables, which are not the same as money disbursed in exchange for security services. Opposition leaders have called for a forensic probe; former presidential candidates and lawmakers have demanded a line-by-line explanation. The public deserves it.
The constitutional and fiduciary contradiction — in plain language
Imagine the security apparatus of the state — soldiers, police officers, intelligence operatives — with obsolete equipment, unpaid allowances and crumbling barracks. Now imagine a corporate ledger line, without beneficiaries named, larger than what the state claims to have budgeted for those institutions for the whole year. Which is reasonable? Which is lawful? Which is defensible to Nigerians who send their children to underfunded schools and queue at dilapidated clinics?
This contradiction is not footnote material; it is the central political scandal of our time. The state should not be outsourcing — and thereby hiding — security spending at scales that eclipse the formal, constitutional security budget. If pipeline security requires private supplementation, fine. But the supplementation must be transparent, competitively procured, budget-aligned, and audited. Otherwise, we have created a parallel security economy that answers to no parliament, no people, and no standard of public accountability.
Budgeted versus released: the cash didn’t flow to statutory agencies
There is a second layer to this indictment: the distinction between budgeted sums and released cash. The defence and security allocation for 2024 — while approved — was historically and practically paid out in tranches, with capital inflows depressed and many planned procurements delayed or under-executed. Budget performance trackers and legislative oversight sessions revealed that capital releases across government were poor; security agencies often received only a fraction of their approved capital votes during 2024. Meanwhile, the NNPC figure surfaces as a corporate accounting entry that — if it represents cash flow — bypassed the public budget cycle. That bypass is a governance problem; it removes layers of scrutiny that our democratic system depends on.
What ₦17.5 trillion could have bought — a blunt arithmetic rebuke
Let us be explicit so readers can do the math for themselves. We already set out scenarios in earlier analysis: redirected judiciously, ₦17.5 trillion could have financed transformational improvements across Nigeria’s statutory security system and across human capital sectors:
It is more than five times the approved defence allocation and well over double the combined budgets of defence, health, education and agriculture. That scale alone is extraordinary.
Using conservative market prices, that money could have bought tens of thousands of patrol vehicles, thousands of armoured vehicles, high-density drone surveillance fleets, and national communications and forensic infrastructure — and still left enough to raise salaries and rebuild barracks across the country. The arithmetic is not fanciful; it is sourced from current market benchmarks. (See earlier scenario breakdowns and sourcing in our analysis.)
The question is not whether ₦17.5 trillion would have made a difference — it obviously would — but why it did not go where public priorities demand. The public must know who decided otherwise.
Real spending traced — procurement and equipment payments in 2024
If skeptics insist we are making rhetorical points, consider what we can trace in public procurement disclosures and reporting. The federal government reported at least ₦63.6 billion on specific military procurement (equipment and ammunition) within a recent seven-month window in 2024, and trade records suggest Nigeria imported hundreds of millions worth of arms and ammunition during the year. These are verifiable cash flows to statutory agencies — but they are tiny compared with the ₦17.5 trillion NNPC figure and reflect only partial government spending, not the full depth of national security needs.
To put it plainly: real, verifiable procurement spending to the armed forces and security agencies during 2024 runs in the tens or low hundreds of billions of naira in the items we can trace — while the NNPC ledger shows a figure in the tens of trillions labelled “pipeline protection.” The mismatch is not a rounding error. It is a governance emergency.
Three indictment scenarios — pick your poison
There are only three plausible explanations for this state of affairs — and each is damning:
1. Catastrophic misprioritisation. The money was spent legitimately on security contractors and related operations — but deployed so disproportionately that it reveals a policymaking failure where oil infrastructure is treated as more important than people. That would be a moral and strategic failure of governance.
2. Accounting fiction. The ₦17.5 trillion is largely composed of non-cash items: under-recovery claims, receivables, exchange-rate adjustments and other accounting entries that have been aggregated and presented as if they were cash payments to security contractors. That would be dishonest and manipulative presentation to the public and to legislators.
3. Systemic corruption and bypass. The money was paid out in cash through opaque contracts with minimal oversight. Beneficiaries are hidden, procurement rules were ignored, and public servants and legislators were bypassed. That would be criminal and calls for forensic investigation.
None of these options is innocuous. Every one demands a forensic audit, immediate parliamentary hearings, and transparent publication of contracts, invoices and bank details. The people who govern must explain which of these explanations — if any — is the truth.
What accountability should look like — a minimal public demand
If the government and Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited are serious about ending suspicion, they must do, at minimum, the following — publicly, and without delay:
1. Publish the full schedule of the ₦17.5 trillion: contract names, beneficiary companies, contract values, procurement method (open tender, single source, emergency), dates and deliverables.
2. Allow a forensic audit by an independent, internationally reputable firm selected by the National Assembly and civil society (not by the company whose accounts are in question).
3. Hold public hearings in the relevant parliamentary committees where NNPC executives, procurement officers, the Ministry of Petroleum and the Accountant-General provide sworn testimony.
4. Ring-fence and reallocate any funds found to be improperly paid, and ensure verified funds are used transparently for public security, health, education and agriculture rebuilding programs.
5. Reform procurement for security contracting: e-procurement, civilian oversight panels, and published performance metrics for contracts involving national security.
These are not radical demands; they are basic standards of democratic fiscal accountability. The shame is that they must be demanded at all.
International and domestic examples — why other states do not accept this
Comparative examples are instructive. When other democracies incur large security-related expenditures outside the budget, legislatures and auditors treat the sums as exceptional and demand transparency. In post-conflict or high-risk settings where private firms supplement the military, contracts are published, oversight committees are activated and emergency procurements are time-limited and audited. There is no precedent in good governance that validates a permanent parallel security economy that dwarfs the formal budget. That absence of precedent should alarm Nigerians — because where standards fall, corruption and impunity rise. (See general practice in public procurement and defence oversight models.)
Final, uncompromising verdict
The ₦17.5 trillion figure recorded by Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited for pipeline protection in 2024 is, at minimum, a scandal of concealment and, at worst, evidence of corrosive fiscal malpractice. It is a figure that dwarfs the state’s own commitments to defend its people, feed them, educate them and keep them healthy. That fact alone should ignite outrage.
But outrage is not an answer: action is. Parliament must act. Auditors must audit. The public must receive the receipts. Until that happens, the conclusion is inevitable: either Nigeria has been catastrophically misgoverned — prioritising pipelines over people — or the state has been gamed by accounting sleight of hand and opaque contracting. Both are unacceptable.
We end with a precise demand: publish the contracts, name the companies, release the invoices, and let independent auditors follow the money. Anything less is a continuing contempt for democratic accountability — and for every Nigerian who, in 2024, relied on a budget that was supposed to secure their security, health, education and food.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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