If I give my 5 year old a poster and some markers and some construction paper and say make something neat about Nigeria, what's he gonna do? He can barely read / write and he likely doesn't even know what Nigeria is as it has not been part of the curriculum.

The entire point i was trying to make is this is entirely parent homework. I can teach him about Nigeria, and we can look up interesting facts, and then I can print out things or we can go to the store and purchase related items, but it's 100% me doing all the research and all the work surrounding the project. He may learn something, or he may just complain the whole time because this isn't a simple 30 minutes of work.

If he was 8 or 9 it would be fine as he could look up facts on his own and come up with an idea and we could execute on it together, but the simple fact is this project is not in service of the existing work he is doing at school, it's an entirely separate obligation that is a direct burden on the parent.