Contractors blocked the Finance Ministry again. The unpaid debt is why your road stayed unfinished.

Contractors gathered outside the Federal Ministry of Finance in Abuja this week and blocked the entrance. Work done. Contracts signed. Nothing paid.

The government owes them. The mechanism is the same one that produced every abandoned project in your state. A job gets awarded. Funds get allocated on paper. Disbursement doesn't arrive. The contractor waits, borrows to keep the site running, eventually stops. Workers scatter. The site goes quiet. What's left is the road that stops 200 metres before the junction, the school block with a roof on only half the building, the health centre that has been under renovation since the year you can't quite remember.

This week, the House of Representatives erupted during a budget defence session as a minister proposed a 3.4 trillion naira sectoral budget for 2026. Lawmakers questioned allocations, demanded justifications, and clashed with officials on the floor. That 3.4 trillion sits on top of debts from previous budgets that haven't been settled. Nigeria doesn't clear what it owes before announcing what it plans to spend. It just keeps announcing.

The contractors outside the Finance Ministry have heard the announcements. They want the money from the last one.