Obasanjo Hits Lawmakers, Describes Constituency Projects As ‘Daylight Robbery’

Thursday September 04, 2025
By TheNewsDESK |

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has launched fresh attacks on the Nigerian lawmakers, describing them as “much worse” than all those who have gone in the First, Second and Third Republics.
He labelled constituency projects by legislators either at the national or state level as daylight “unarmed robbery” and one devised by lawmakers “in their hunger for illegitimate money.”

Obasanjo said this in one of his recently released books titled “Nigeria Past and Future: Contemplations on Nigeria’s History and Vision For Tomorrow.”

In the chapter seven of the book “Lawmakers at Federal and State Levels”, Obasanjo recalled that twice he had to directly deal with Nigerian lawmakers at national level, as a military leader and democratically-elected president – and he saw “no redeeming feature in them to build a Nigeria of our dream as projected in our constitution.”

The farmer said the bill which birthed the current leading anti-graft agency in the country, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), took a year and half to scale through the National Assembly as it was “somewhat watered down in the form that it was passed.”
According to him, some of the lawmakers said that if they passed the bill as originally sent to them, most of them would go to jail after their term as lawmakers.

Obasanjo said he had to assent the bill as he was hinted that any attempt to return it to the parliament, the legal framework would never have seen the light of the day.