When construction of a building to be used as a police station began in Bakono, a rural community in Nasarawa Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, in 2020, residents felt, for the first time in years, that someone in Abuja had heard their cries.
For years, the people of Bakono and its neighbouring communities had lived under the suffocating grip of bandits and kidnappers, paying ransoms they could not afford, watching neighbours dragged into forests and returning, sometimes, in body bags. A police station, they believed, would change all that.
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Five years on, that hope lies in rubble.
A PREMIUM TIMES investigation has found that the N43.5 million police station project nominated by a federal lawmaker, funded by the federal government, and awarded to an Abuja-based contractor, remains a roofless, windowless carcass: abandoned, without a signpost, and without a completion date in sight. The contractor blames inflation for the incompletion.
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When contacted, the lawmaker said his job ended with the nomination of the project. The implementing agency claims the project is 85 per cent done. None of them appears to have set foot on the site recently.
Meanwhile, in Bakono, the bandits’ threat has persisted.
Living under siege
Yunusa Adam, secretary to the district head of Bakono, does not need a notebook to recall the toll of the past four years.
“For years now, the people of Bakono, Ogufa, Ajada, and Oguba have faced the relentless challenge of kidnapping,” he told PREMIUM TIMES during a visit to the community in February. “From 2021 through last year, we lived in fear and agony. They often demand huge ransoms. By my calculations, this community of Bakono alone has paid more than N40 million to these kidnappers.”
Between 2022 and 2023, Mr Adam said communities across the emirate council paid approximately N50 million in ransoms. The victims, mostly farmers, were abducted from their fields. In some cases, communities raised the money collectively only to receive their loved ones’ corpses.
Idris Yahaya, another Bakono resident, said the situation has exacted a toll that goes beyond money. “I don’t know how long we are going to continue to live in fear,” he told PREMIUM TIMES, adding that, “Although kidnapping has reduced compared to previous years, the project needs to be completed soon. Such a project is not supposed to be delayed or abandoned.”
It was this desperation that drove the district head, in 2020, to reach out to the federal lawmaker representing the Nasarawa/Toto/Gadabuke Federal Constituency, Abdulmumin Muhammad, seeking his intervention to establish a police presence in the area.
The lawmaker responded by nominating the construction of a police station in Bakono under the federal government’s Zonal Intervention Project (ZIP) scheme.
The Project
A review of ZIP budget documents by PREMIUM TIMES shows that a total of N34 million was allocated between 2022 and 2023 to the Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority (LBRBDA) for the execution of the project, an agency whose primary mandate is water resources management, not the construction of law enforcement infrastructure.
On 25 July 2022, the agency awarded the contract to Beehive Global Concept Limited, an Abuja-based firm located at No. 50, Ebitu Ukiwe Street, Jabi, at a cost of N33.7 million, with an initial eight-month completion window effective from 18 August 2022. On 5 October 2023, additional works were approved at N9.7 million, bringing the total contract sum to N43.5 million.
In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by PREMIUM TIMES, LBRBDA confirmed that N31.2 million had been released to the contractor between 2022 and 2023. The agency also claimed, as of April 2025, that the project was 85.10 per cent completed even though the deadline was 5 October 2023, a date that had long passed.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation separately confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that all funds for Zonal Intervention Projects for 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024 had been released to respective implementing agencies.
What PREMIUM TIMES found on the ground
The agency’s claims bear little resemblance to the structure standing in Bakono.
During a visit to the project site in February, PREMIUM TIMES found a building stripped of every essential feature: no roof, no windows, no doors, no flooring, no visible electrical work.
There was no signpost identifying the contractor or the implementing agency. Residents said the contractor had not returned to the site in nearly four years.
Benjamin Eazi, a civil engineer contacted by PREMIUM TIMES, said the agency’s assessment defies professional standards. “A project is typically considered 85 per cent complete only when the building is roofed, plastered, and fitted with doors and windows, leaving only final finishes like painting or landscaping,” Mr Eazi said. “What is in Bakono is not 85 per cent complete. It is a carcass.”
Residents told PREMIUM TIMES they were unsurprised by the contradiction. “Both the federal and state governments have neglected us and left us to our fate,” one resident said, adding, “the bandits know we have no protection.”
The Contractor’s Defence: Inflation and Impassable Roads
When PREMIUM TIMES contacted Anefu Daniel, the managing director of Beehive Global Concept Ltd, he did not dispute that the project was stalled. He instead blamed the economic conditions that followed the removal of fuel subsidies in 2023.
“That project should not be abandoned, considering its importance to the community,” Mr Daniel said. “But we reached a point where we could no longer manage the resources due to the price hikes.”
He noted that the price of cement alone had tripled between the contract award in 2022 and the start of major work in 2023, rendering the original budget inadequate.
He also cited difficult terrain. Because the community is not accessible by motorable road, the contractor had to ferry construction materials by motorcycle, adding substantially to logistics costs.
Mr Daniel said his firm is now working with lawmaker Abdulmumin Muhammad to seek additional funding to complete the project. He did not provide a timeline.
The Lawmaker: ‘I’ve Done My Job’
Meanwhile, Mr Muhammad was unequivocal when PREMIUM TIMES reached him. He said the abandoned station was not his problem.
“I only initiated the project because of the demand from my constituency; I am not the government nor the contractor,” he said. “If you have any problem with the project or why the police station is not completed, you should ask the contractor and not call me.”
The lawmaker argued that by securing the project for the community rather than directing it elsewhere, he had fulfilled his obligation.
When pressed on whether a partially constructed building in a bandit-prone community should be allowed to remain in its current state, Mr Muhammad maintained he had “done his job” by initiating the nomination.
A National Pattern of Abandonment
Osiyemi Joshua, head of Tracka at BudgIT Nigeria, a civic-tech organisation that monitors federal budget implementation, said the Bakono case is far from isolated.
According to BudgIT’s 2024 Tracka report, out of 2,760 capital projects tracked across the federation with a combined allocation of N2.26 trillion, 99 projects were found to have been abandoned despite the disbursement of N8 billion to their contractors.
“Regardless of inflation, this project should have been completed,” Mr Joshua said.
“The problem is that delayed payments by agencies often create a bottleneck that contractors cannot overcome, especially in a volatile economy. When a lawmaker distances himself from a project he nominated, it effectively becomes orphaned, and the community pays the price.”
He called for a completion-first approach to federal budgeting: no new project should be initiated by a lawmaker or handled by an agency until existing projects under their oversight are fully delivered.
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The consequences of inaction, Mr Joshua warned, extend well beyond wasted funds. “In communities like Bakono, which are already battling banditry and kidnapping, an abandoned police building is not just a waste of resources; it can become a hideout for criminals. By leaving these projects in ruins, the government is inadvertently widening the space for criminal activity to thrive.”
Police explain stance
When asked if the Nasarawa State Police Command was aware of the project or had been officially notified of its construction, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ramhan Nansel, said he was not aware of it.
“I currently do not have information on whether the command is aware of the building; I sincerely do not know about it or if we were ever notified,” Mr Nansel said. He added that he would need to inquire whether the community or the lawmaker had formally informed the police about the project.
While explaining the standard procedure for such initiatives, the PPRO noted that the police are often only brought in after the structure is finished.
“In most cases, a community may decide to build a structure first. Once it is available, they inform the police and officially apply for a deployment. We then send a team to inspect the facility to see if it is habitable and meets the standard requirements for a police station. If it does, we inform the Inspector General (IG) officially. Only after his approval will operatives deploy,” he explained.
The spokesperson disclosed that the command has taken alternative measures to secure the Bakono axis. He stated that mobile police officers have been posted to the community to manage recent security challenges.
“We recently had a crisis in that area and the command deployed officers immediately. Since then, we have recorded little to no security challenges along that axis,” Mr Nansel said.
As the Building Crumbles, the Bodies Mount
The slow death of the Bakono police station project is unfolding against a backdrop of escalating violence across Nasarawa State.
On 3 April, herdsmen in a coordinated attack stormed Maraban Udege, a community neighbouring Bakono, opening fire on residents. 11 people were killed, and approximately 55 houses were razed in that attack, residents told PREMIUM TIMES. The victims were predominantly young men.
Survivors said those lives were lost because the government had consistently failed to prioritise the security of rural communities.
Back in Bakono, Mr Adam still walks past the abandoned police station on his way to the district head’s office. He knows every crack in its walls.
“When this project began, we were anxious for its completion and the deployment of security personnel to help fight this menace,” he said. “Years later, the project remains unfinished. We are still waiting.”
This report was produced as part of the HumAngle’s Strengthening Community Journalism and Human Rights Advocacy (SCOJA) project.
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