In February 2026, at a brief ceremony at the Aso Villa, President Bola Tinubu signed the Electoral Act 2026 into law. Arguing that the country's election laws had to keep pace with inflation, the new act doubled the presidential spending ceiling, from ₦5 billion to ₦10 billion. It also raised the single-donor limit from ₦50 million to ₦500 million and pulled every other elective office in the same upward direction.

Barely three months later, an Abuja outlet reported that 31 governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had pooled monthly deductions from their states' Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursements. The proceeds, put at roughly ₦800 billion (about $533 million at the prevailing rate), sat in accounts linked to the Renewed Hope Ambassadors and the Renewed Hope Network, the main vehicles coordinating Mr Tinubu's 2027 re-election bid. Both organizations are led by Hope Uzodimma, the Imo State governor and chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), who also heads the president's re-election campaign.

Days later, a separate report claimed that dividends from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas company (NLNG), which by statute belong to the Federation Account, had also passed through Mr Uzodimma's hands before reaching their constitutional destination. The reports also tied the alleged scheme to the abrupt removal of Wale Edun as finance minister. Both the APC and Mr Uzodimma's office dismissed the ₦800 billion figure as "false" and "laughable," noting that INEC's official campaign window for the 2027 race does not open until September.

Set against the new electoral law, this analysis by UDEME, a social accountability project of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), measures the alleged ₦800 billion campaign chest, weighs its constitutionality and its human cost and asks where the regulators went.

Alleged funds breach legal spending limits

At the new ₦10 billion presidential spending limit, the alleged ₦800 billion chest is 80 times the legal limit. Under the old ₦5 billion limit, it would have been 160 times.

Even at the raised ₦500 million donation limit, 31 governors each giving the maximum could lawfully supply only ₦15.5 billion, 1.94 percent of the ₦800 billion in question. Under the former ₦50 million limit, the same 31 governors could only have contributed ₦1.55 billion, about 0.19 percent. Either way, roughly 98 percent of the sum sits outside any lawful fundraising framework.

Under Section 92 of the Electoral Act 2026, a party that spends past the limits will forfeit every naira of the excess and pay a fine of up to ₦10 million. A candidate who breaches it will pay one percent of the permitted limit, twelve months in prison, or both.

Experts say the gap between Nigeria's campaign financing in law and practice has been enforcement. Abdullahi Tijani, constitutional lawyer and Executive Director at The Liberalist, points to the constitutional immunity sitting governors enjoy as the principal barrier. "These state governors have immunity granted them by the constitution, so it's difficult for them to be investigated or prosecuted," he said. "As long as they are still in office, no government institution can prosecute these people."

Mr Tijani also rejected the APC South-East's defence that no campaign can lawfully exist before INEC's September timeline. State money, he argued, does not become fair game simply because the campaign window has yet to open. "So, whether or not campaigns have resumed or not, state governors cannot unilaterally deduct any funds from the federal allocation to their states. Doing so will amount to gross misappropriation, which is of course, a breach of public trust," he said.

New Campaign Limits Disprove Senate's Inflation Claims

The Electoral Act 2026 lifted every spending and donation limit sharply. The governorship limit rose from ₦1 billion to ₦3 billion, the House of Representatives limit from ₦70 million to ₦250 million, and the ceiling for state assembly and area council chairmanship candidates from ₦30 million to ₦100 million. The maximum donation by an individual or company jumped tenfold, from ₦50 million under the 2022 Act to ₦500 million.

At a public hearing, the Senate Committee said the increases merely tracked inflation, calling the 2022 limits unrealistic. The figures tell another story. Between February 2022 and February 2026, consumer prices rose by about 133 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), leaving the overall price level roughly 2.3 times higher. Most new limits climbed well past that mark. The governorship limit tripled, and so did the House and state assembly limits. The Senate handed itself the steepest rise of all, a fivefold jump from ₦100 million to ₦500 million, more than double what its own inflation argument would justify.

Spending limits for two offices moved in the other direction. The presidential limit doubled to ₦10 billion, short of the ₦11.66 billion needed to match inflation, while the councillorship limit fell in real terms. Taken together, the revisions do not follow any consistent inflation formula. The donation limit reveals this more clearly. A ₦50 million limit in 2022 would be worth about ₦11.66 million today once adjusted for inflation. The new law sets it at ₦500 million, more than four times that value. The Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) warned in its factsheet that the higher limit could deepen the influence of money in elections unless the disclosure rules in Section 93 are enforced.

Although the Act is silent on where campaign money should come from, the 1999 constitution bars the use of public funds and federal allocations in particular, for election campaigns. Section 162 requires federally collected revenue to be paid into the Federation Account and shared among the federal, state and local tiers under the approved formula. Once those funds reach a state's account, they remain public money held in trust and governed by the state's Appropriation Law, the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and the Public Procurement Act 2007.

Diversion of FAAC Allocations Illegal

Nigeria's Supreme Court has already prohibited the diversion or withholding of federal allocations. In Attorney-General of the Federation v Attorney-General of Abia State and 35 Others (SC/CV/343/2024), Justice Emmanuel Agim held that withholding or diverting Federation Account funds at any tier of government is unconstitutional and therefore illegal. That case turned on governors withholding local government allocations, but the constitutional reasoning runs wider. FAAC allocations and other public funds in state accounts belong to the citizens of the federating units, not the officials who hold the keys.

Human rights lawyer Deji Adeyanju said the alleged FAAC deductions raised "grave constitutional and criminal concerns" under Section 162. The arrangement also runs up against the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Act, the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, which covers the layering of public funds through intermediary structures like the Renewed Hope Ambassadors and the Renewed Hope Network, as well as the criminal codes of every state from which an allocation was allegedly deducted.

If the NLNG claim survives investigation, the legal frame widens again. NLNG is 49 percent owned by the Federal Government through NNPC Limited, with Shell Gas BV holding 25.6 percent, TotalEnergies 15 percent and Eni 10.4 percent. Across 25 years of production the company has paid roughly $44 billion in dividends. Nigeria's 49 percent share is meant to flow through NNPC into the Federation Account under Section 162(1), an obligation reinforced by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act 2007 and the Petroleum Industry Act 2021.

NEITI's own 2015 audit found that NNPC could not show evidence of remitting $16.8 billion in NLNG dividends to the Federation Account between 2000 and 2015. In 2021, the Senate Finance Committee ordered the Accountant-General's office to investigate a further $18.3 billion paid between 2004 and 2020. Neither inquiry has produced a public reconciliation. Against that record, a fresh diversion through Mr Uzodimma's PGF structure would not be a break from the pattern but a continuation of the very institutional gap NEITI was created to close.

Actual Cost of the Missing Money

PresidentTinubu's 2026 budget runs to ₦58.18 trillion, of which ₦2.48 trillion goes to health and ₦3.52 trillion to education. The alleged missing funds equal 32 percent of the entire federal health budget and 23 percent of education. It is slightly lower than the ₦807 billion 2025 budget of Mr Uzodimma's own Imo State.

The 2025 federal budget set aside ₦7.4 billion to build and equip 25 primary healthcare centres, about ₦296 million each. At that unit cost, ₦800 billion would build and equip roughly 2,700 PHCs nationwide. BudgIT's audit of 5,092 functional PHCs found 36 percent needing full reconstruction, 64 percent needing renovation, and only 29 percent with a doctor on staff. The missing money would more than cover the entire reconstruction backlog.

The Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), set up to revive basic healthcare, received ₦131.5 billion in 2024 and ₦298.4 billion in 2025, yet states drew down only ₦45.4 billion and ₦58 billion in those years. The alleged ₦800 billion is more than six years of the 2024 BHCPF allocation.

Measured against the ₦3.55 billion-per-state Universal Basic Education Commission matching grant, the same sum would fund more than six years of Nigeria's universal basic education commitment, the kind of money that could begin to cut into the country's 18.3 million out-of-school children.

Silence and Accountability Concerns

Section 87 of the new Act preserves INEC's power to set extra limits on campaign donations and to demand information on spending and sources. Yet across the last four electoral cycles, the commission has never prosecuted a presidential or governorship candidate for a campaign finance offence. The EFCC and ICPC have moved on no sitting governor for FAAC-related diversion. NEITI, for all its audit findings on NNPC dividends, holds no power to compel remittance.

UDEME traced the accountability layers that could have caught or stopped the alleged diversion. The first is the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF), where every FAAC disbursement is logged. Under the Money Laundering Act 2022, movements above the reporting threshold within or between commercial banks should have triggered a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) at the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). So far none of these bodies, the anti-graft agencies among them, has announced an investigation. That silence raises hard questions about accountability, transparency and possible complicity.

In July, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) sued INEC at the Federal High Court in Abuja over its failure to investigate the allegations that APC governors diverted ₦800 billion for political and campaign purposes. In suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/1426/2026, filed in July at the Federal High Court in Abuja, SERAP seeks "an order of mandamus to direct and compel INEC to investigate the allegations that governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) diverted N800 billion for political and campaign purposes."

When incumbents can reach into state coffers to bankroll a personal campaign or their party's political fortunes, that built-in advantage tilts the contest even before it starts and denies the opposition a level playing field.