Nigeria’s anti-corruption commission launched an audit of 760 federal road projects worth more than ₦36 trillion, as a columnist pressed for a broader review of unfinished public investment.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said in a Dec. 8, 2025, announcement that the exercise began Nov. 14 and covers projects across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The commission said investigators, Federal Ministry of Works engineers and independent specialists were assigned to assess project sites against records and planned deliverables. It said the findings from each state would be brought together in a national audit but gave no publication date.
The road review has a narrower scope than the proposal Dipo Baruwa made in an Oct. 26 opinion column for Premium Times. Baruwa urged a review of federal and state projects from the past 20 years, along with economic programs and policy initiatives that were discontinued or only partly implemented. He called for decisions on which to complete, revive or end.
Baruwa points to weak planning, policy shifts after leadership changes, funding problems, corruption and poor accountability as contributors to unfinished projects. He also argues that such projects can continue to incur maintenance costs while intended jobs and private investment fail to materialize. His column does not give a verified nationwide estimate of those costs.
The ICPC’s Phase 2 project-tracking findings offer a separate account of the problem, citing poor coordination between incoming and outgoing legislators among factors in some project abandonments. The commission’s tracking page also lists procurement and contractor issues.
Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Steel Development said in an announcement that a separate technical and financial audit of Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited was underway at the time. The ministry’s summary of a 2018 technical assessment described the plant as generally robust, with normal deterioration in replaceable parts, and said the assessment recommended automating manually operated control systems. That announcement gave no findings or timetable for the audit.
