The Lagos State House of Assembly has earmarked ₦6.2 billion in its 2025 budget for the purchase of 40 properties in Lagos or Abuja, effectively allocating a house worth about ₦155 million to each lawmaker.
According to the Assembly’s second-quarter 2025 budget performance report, ₦1 billion — representing 16.1% of the total — had already been spent by June. With 40 legislators in the chamber, the appropriation appears to provide a retirement package for every member.
This expenditure has become a recurring item in the Assembly’s budgets. In 2024, the provision for lawmakers’ properties jumped from ₦1.22 billion to ₦6.2 billion, although only ₦126 million (about 2%) was eventually spent. In contrast, 2023 records show ₦1.131 billion out of ₦1.22 billion was used, largely before the fourth quarter. The reports, however, remain silent on whether those acquisitions were distributed to members of the ninth Assembly, which ended that year.
The legality of such allocations is unclear. Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, under Section 124(5), empowers state assemblies to legislate pensions or gratuities for governors and their deputies but makes no such provision for legislators.
This development mirrors similar controversies elsewhere. In 2019, then-Bayelsa Governor Seriake Dickson rejected a bill granting lawmakers life pensions, stressing that assemblies could adjust pension amounts but not create new entitlements. More recently, Abia and Benue States scrapped pension laws for ex-governors, citing growing public backlash.
In Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu pledged in 2021 to repeal the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law, which guaranteed lifelong benefits for former governors and deputies. However, the Assembly later amended the law to cut entitlements by half instead of abolishing
