The recent approval of ₦124.4 billion for the Nigeria Police Trust Fund—quietly passed by the Senate in April 2025 as its budget for 2024—marks the highest allocation in the Fund’s short history. By comparison, the 2023 budget stood at ₦57 billion, while the preceding years hovered around similar or even lower figures. This increase of over 100% raises important questions: What accounts for such a sharp spike in funding? And, perhaps more importantly, how is accountability being enforced when such a record sum is approved long after the financial year it supposedly serves?
The Nigeria Police Trust Fund (NPTF), created by an Act of the National Assembly in 2019, was a bold attempt to address the chronic underfunding and neglect of the police. It promised a dedicated stream of resources for training, equipment, infrastructure, and the general welfare of officers—areas where the Nigeria Police Force has historically suffered. But nearly five years later, the Trust Fund has become yet another example of a structurally sound idea faltering under the weight of poor implementation, weak transparency, and questionable political will.
From the outset, the NPTF was plagued by a conflict of interests embedded into its very design. The same institution that benefits from the Fund—the Nigeria Police—also holds sway in its administration. This makes effective oversight almost impossible. Civil society actors raised this concern early on, warning that any structure that allows beneficiaries to serve as gatekeepers will inevitably lack accountability and citing the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, which is a public-private sector partnership, as a better funding model. Those warnings have, regrettably, proven prescient.
Despite claims by the Fund’s leadership that thousands of officers have been trained and new operational vehicles procured, the lived reality for many officers and the communities they serve does not reflect this supposed progress. Police barracks remain in dire condition. Officers often still buy their own uniforms. Victims of police abuse report the same old extortion tactics at checkpoints and police stations. If the Trust Fund has made an impact, it remains barely visible to the Nigerian public—and that is a red flag in itself.
Worse still is the fiscal irregularity that now defines the Fund’s operations. This past week, the Senate approved the NPTF’s 2024 budget, with legislative action by the House of Representatives still pending. There was no national outrage. No media inquisition. The Nigerian public seems to have gotten used to such news. Yet, this is not just an administrative delay—it is a constitutional and governance problem and raises many questions. How can a statutory body meant to operate within an annual budget cycle still be functioning without a formally approved budget for most of the year? What expenditures have already been made in the absence of legislative appropriation? And what does this say about institutional culture, where disregard for time-bound budgeting processes has become normalized?
This kind of retroactive budgeting reflects a deeper dysfunction. It shows how little priority is given to proper financial planning or legal compliance, even in agencies entrusted with sensitive national responsibilities. It raises a broader concern about the habit of improvisation in governance—where legal frameworks are routinely undermined for convenience, and critical institutions like the NPTF are left operating in a grey zone of legitimacy.
Even more troubling is the apparent disregard for judicial authority in the continued funding of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund. In Attorney General of Rivers State v. Attorney General of the Federation, the Federal High Court, in 2022, ruled unequivocally that deductions from the Federation Account to finance the Trust Fund were unconstitutional, violating Section 162(3) of the 1999 Constitution. Yet, recent budget approvals continue to include line items sourced from exactly those deductions. The 2023 budget for the NPTF—which was openly published and approved by the Senate—included exactly such deductions: 0.5% of total revenue accruing to the Federation Account and 0.005% of companies’ net profits. This was not only in direct contravention of the court’s ruling but done with full legislative backing, raising profound questions about government’s commitment to compliance to judicial pronouncements. While the details of this 2024 budget were not made public, the questions remain. Is the Nigeria Police Trust Fund still funded directly from the Federation Account despite the judgment of the Federal High Court?
There is also the issue of the duration of the Fund, which nobody seems to be talking about. According to Section 2(2) of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund (Establishment) Act, 2019, the Fund is to operate for an initial term of six years from its commencement date, which is June 24, 2019. This means that, by law, the Fund is set to cease operations on June 24, 2025, unless its tenure is extended by an Act of the National Assembly. Section 28 of the Act also provides for a six-month winding-up period, during which all outstanding assets and liabilities are to be transferred to the Nigeria Police Force. As of now, there is no publicly available information indicating that the National Assembly has passed a law to extend the Fund’s lifespan beyond the initial six-year period. Therefore, unless such an extension is granted, the NPTF is expected to conclude its operations by December 24, 2025, following the six-month winding-up period. This raises a fundamental legal question: what becomes of the Fund and any spending it undertakes after June 2025? Without a formal extension, any continued operation or expenditure fall outside the bounds of legality. This is not a trivial matter; it speaks to the broader issue of institutional integrity and respect for statutory limits in Nigeria’s governance culture.
If the democratic environment in Nigeria is to mature, it is imperative that institutions like the NPTF act not as symbolic gestures, but as real instruments of reform. This means that an agency intended to ensure the enforcement of laws should not be contravening the very laws it is intended to protect. This also means respecting legal timelines, ensuring proper oversight, and making their operations visible and accountable to the Nigerian public.