Uju Ohaneye, Minister of Women Affairs, has earmarked N2.5 billion out of her ministry’s N10,027,404,354 budget for Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President’s constituency.

Listed in the 2024 appropriation bill as part of her ministry’s capital expenditure for the year is a N2.5 billion provision for empowerment programmes in the Akwa Ibom Northwest Senatorial District.

This provision, split into five different line items, states that the Women Affairs Ministry would give generators, deep freezers and other empowerment items to boost the earnings of women in the district.

Each line item names two local government areas as beneficiaries, and all five line items total 10 LGAs – the exact total of LGAs in the district. The N2.5 billion total is to be split into N250 million per LGA.

Surprisingly, this district is one which Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, hails from and represents in the Senate.

Each of the budget provisions fails to mention Akwa Ibom State, and is vaguely worded as “Empowerment of women with deep freezers, generators and other empowerment items to boost their daily earning in the two local governments of north west senatorial district”.

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No other state or LGA has this provision, and other than a N300,000,000 proposed construction of a women training centre in the Dala LGA of Kano and a N250,000,000 budget for training and empowerment of women and youths in the Ankpa Federal Constituency of Kogi State, there are no similar provisions.

FIJ also checked the National Bureau of Statistics data for multidimensional poverty in Nigeria and found that Akwa Ibom ranks outside the top six states, which are Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Jigawa and Bauchi.

Compared to the states’ population, Akwa Ibom has the 17th highest population to multidimensionally poor people with a percentage with 71.3 percent.

With 16 states worse off, it raises questions over why the senatorial district was chosen for this N2.5 billion expenditure its representative is tasked with approving.