ICPC Reopens Osun Files As N1bn Projects Face Fresh Scrutiny
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission has turned its searchlight on Osun State, opening a fresh round of checks on more than N1 billion worth of federally funded projects, a move that places the state inside one of Nigeria’s largest and least understood accountability exercises.
The commission’s tracking team lead, Mrs Mary Oke, said in Osogbo on Wednesday that the exercise would run across the three senatorial districts of Osun Central, Osun East and Osun West. According to Oke, the review covers road construction, solar powered street lights, skill acquisition schemes and empowerment programmes, along with grants meant for widows, persons with disabilities and the elderly, community halls and the renovation of community libraries. She said the aim was to confirm that public money delivered value and that contractors built to specification, and she urged residents to protect completed projects from vandalism.
On its own, the announcement reads like routine oversight. Set against the national record, it points to a problem successive governments have struggled to solve, namely whether the billions voted every year for constituency and executive projects actually reach the communities they are meant to serve.
The Osun review sits under the commission’s Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative, known as CEPTI, which began in 2019. Figures presented by the ICPC chairman, Dr Musa Adamu Aliyu, in May 2026 show that the initiative has tracked projects worth more than N22.9 trillion since inception, with cash recoveries on improperly executed jobs exceeding N4.9 billion and savings to the Federal Government from aborted, inflated or re-scoped projects passing N91.4 billion. In one recent cycle disclosed in March 2026, the commission said it monitored about 950 projects valued at roughly N415.25 billion across 26 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Much of that scrutiny now rests on technology. The commission says it deploys geospatial mapping, data analytics and artificial intelligence to verify whether a project exists, where it stands and whether its cost matches its delivery, tools designed to expose ghost projects, contract inflation and the diversion of public funds. In November 2025 it partnered the Federal Ministry of Works to physically verify 760 federal road projects across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, with results expected during 2026.
Osun is no stranger to the exercise. In November 2024 the commission tracked projects valued at about N10.47 billion in the state under an earlier phase, visiting sites in Osogbo, Egbedore and other communities. The current review, though smaller in headline value, keeps the state under continuous watch and arrives at a politically sensitive moment, days after the 15 August governorship election that returned Governor Ademola Adeleke for a second term. Constituency projects are funded through the National Assembly and executed by federal agencies rather than the state government, which means the tracking cuts across party lines and touches lawmakers who represent Osun at the centre.
The stakes are well documented. The commission has previously reported that of an estimated 2,321 projects marked for tracking in one national phase, only 1,098 had been reached, exposing wide gaps in delivery. It has also accused some lawmakers, aides and agency officials of steering contracts to firms linked to themselves, their families or associates. Nigeria has committed hundreds of billions of naira to constituency projects on the promise of spreading development to the grassroots, yet abandoned boreholes, empty skills centres and roads that never leave paper remain common complaints.
What is confirmed at this stage is limited. The commission has begun the Osun exercise, named the sectors under review and set the value at more than N1 billion. It has not published the specific projects, the agencies that executed them or any findings, and no infractions have been established. Oke’s appeal to communities to supply information suggests the outcome will depend partly on residents willing to point trackers to sites that exist only in records. Whether the review ends in recoveries, contractors recalled to site or prosecutions will become clear only when the commission releases its assessment.
For now, the exercise renews a familiar question in Osun and across the country. The money has been appropriated and, in many cases, reported as spent. The task before the commission is to establish how much of it became something citizens can see, use and hold.