Project Graveyard

Conceived in 1979 as the anchor of Nigeria's industrialisation drive, Ajaokuta was designed to produce up to 5 million tonnes of steel a year from domestic iron ore. A leaked 2003 US diplomatic cable described it as a mechanism for awarding inflated contracts and kickbacks; construction stalled under Abacha in 1996 at roughly 90% completion and the plant has never produced commercial steel. Budget data shows ₦46.62bn allocated between 2017 and 2026 mostly for salaries and maintenance, and in July 2026 the government signed a 20-year gas supply deal with NNPC in yet another revival attempt.

Planned as Nigeria's largest hydropower plant at 3,050MW on the Dongo River in Taraba State, Mambilla has been studied since a 1972 feasibility report and formally pursued since 1999. A 2003 build-operate-transfer deal with Sunrise Power — which the presidency says the Federal Executive Council never authorised — triggered arbitration that froze the project for nearly two decades. In September 2026 an ICC tribunal in Paris rejected Sunrise's US$680m claim against Nigeria, clearing what President Tinubu called 'the single biggest legal hurdle' — though construction has still not begun.

The 338km dual carriageway linking five Niger Delta states was awarded in 2006 at ₦211bn with a 2010 completion date — without, BusinessDay later reported, an actual engineering design or budgetary cover. Costs were revised upward to ₦726bn under President Jonathan, yet whole sections (notably Bayelsa's Adagbabiri–Mbiama stretch) remain unfinished. In December 2017 the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs said the road was 'designed to fail' and that ₦300bn had already been spent with little to show.

After a 25-year false start dating to 1978, the Obasanjo administration revived the national ID card scheme in 2001 and registered an estimated 60 million adults in February 2003. The US$214m contract went to France's SAGEM amid allegations — later probed in French courts — that officials were bribed to secure the deal. Three former ministers (Sunday Afolabi, Mohammed Shata, Hussaini Akwanga) were charged over the scandal; the cards were haphazardly executed and the scheme was eventually scrapped and replaced by the NIMC.

Conceived under Yar'Adua and awarded in 2010 under President Jonathan, the US$470m National Public Security Communication System was meant to blanket Abuja with CCTV and emergency-response infrastructure. ZTE maintains it delivered per the contract; lawmakers and investigators say the surveillance network never functioned. Nigeria keeps servicing the Chinese loan — an estimated US$36.4m a year until about 2030, per the Foundation for Investigative Journalism's analysis of Debt Management Office records — for cameras that do not watch the capital.