The paper examines the cost of governance and infrastructural development in Nigeria. This is with a view to determining whether the cost of running government in Nigeria has negatively affected the attainment of infrastructural development in the country since the return of democracy in 1999 to date. Qualitative method was adopted where books, journal and internet materials were used as a means of data collection for the study. Prebendalism theory was adopted for the analysis of this paper. The findings from this study established that the cost of governance has negatively impacted on the infrastructural development in Nigeria since 1999 as money is spent on recurrent matters. During this period, it was established that government spent her scarce resources on recurrent items covering personnel and overhead cost to the detriment of capital projects. In view of the findings the study recommends that for any meaningful development to be achieved government must cut down consumption rate (recurrent expenditure) but instead spend the bulk of her resources on capital-based projects and programmes that would positively turn around the fortunes of the Nigerian state. Keyword; Cost of Governance, Infrastructural Development, Democracy, Leadership, Corruption..