It is certain that much of the confusion and poor funding of Nigeria’s annual budgets might have been avoided if President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration had maintained the January to December appropriation cycle inherited from the immediate past government and adopted a transparent as well as realistic approach to annual estimates of revenues and expenditures since the assumption of office.
Therefore, we are convinced that the two identified factors are at the root of the abysmally poor implementation of the 2024 and 2025 budgets, which has pitched some members of the House of Representatives against the President. The former recently demanded that the Commander-in-Chief and his economic team appear before the Parliament to explain the inability of the executive to adequately fund the 2025 budget seven months into the current financial year, despite the appropriation and approval by the National Assembly.
For the purpose of clarity, however, the Federal Government split the 2025 capital budget into a 30percent component release and extended under which Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) were handed a September 30, 2026 deadline to execute projects and process payments, while the remaining 70% component was rolled over into the 2026 capital budget to prevent project abandonment. Expectedly, both the Senate and House of Representatives approved an extension of the capital spending timeline as proposed to overcome administrative bottlenecks and procurement delays.
In other words, it was the poor capital performance in 2025 that warranted the roll-over of last year’s Appropriation Act, which formed a foundational part of the 2026 capital budget that allowed the MDAs to access and utilize trapped funds. This would have been averted if the Federal Government had strictly maintained the 12-month budget cycle.
Besides, following the release of the 2026 budget circular, after the passage of the Appropriation Bill, the central government directed that no new capital projects be introduced in 2026 in order to prioritize the completion of the rolled-over 2025 projects. The MDAs were further ordered to process certificates and payments through the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) platform, apparently to ensure proper tracking and prevent budget overruns.
However, we note with serious concern that even after the directive, many of the completed projects by local contractors, have not been paid for by the government, a delay that triggered repeated protests staged in 2025 and early 2026 by indigenous contractors who invested heavily and obtained bank loans at high interest rates to execute projects, at the Federal Ministry of Finance and at the gates of the National Assembly in Abuja. It would be recalled also that on one occasion, they disrupted a plenary sitting because of unpaid certificates for completed and verified projects with many of the protesters complaining bitterly over their inability to service bank loans obtained.
Their protests then got the attention of the President, who in December expressed grave displeasure at the backlog, directed the immediate settlement of verified contractor liabilities of about N1.5 trn and in addition constituted an inter-Ministerial Committee to harmonize records and deliver a lasting funding solution, as well as announced government readiness to even borrow when necessary to settle verified obligations.
It was upon the basis of the Presidential directive that the National Assembly approved a fresh borrowing in excess of N1 trn specifically to finance the settlement of outstanding obligations on completed and verified capital projects, in addition to dedicated provisions in the 2026 Appropriation Act for contractor liabilities. Though the Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy announced the clearance of substantial sums out of the debt, the contractors insisted that most of their members were still been owed.
Again, it is worthy of note that whereas the Federal Government allocated N32.2 trillion for capital expenditure in the N68.32 trillion 2026 Appropriation Act, statistics revealed that the release of capital funds to MDAs has been delayed or drastically reduced due to revenue shortfalls. This prompted federal lawmakers to interrogate the fiscal authorities over widespread “zero capital releases” given its devasting adverse impact on the timely execution of ongoing developmental projects for the benefits of constituents spread across the 36 states.
In our view therefore, such delays, apart from hampering the delivery of democracy dividends, especially basic amenities to the people at the grassroots, the cost of executing such ongoing projects would increase due to rising inflation rate and ultimately result in the abandonment of some infrastructures at a huge price to the tax payers. Similarly, this will defeat some of the major objectives of annual central budget which include, to strategically allocate limited financial resources toward national priorities, maintain economic stability, and ensure transparent public accountability.
Sadly too, experience has shown that one of the flaws of the current government in the area of budgeting has been a mismatch between projected revenues and expenditures which has resulted in heavy dependence on local and foreign borrowings for the implementation of capital projects and the increasing allocation of funds to debt servicing amid rising public debt.
This partly explains also, why public accountability which requires the government to present a transparent financial plan to the legislature and other stakeholders, which contain detailed expenditures of taxpayer funds has been a herculean task.
Perhaps, it was this lack of transparency and accountability that informed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recent claim that about N8.8 trillion (representing about 2percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP) in public expenditure was unrecorded or missing from official budget documents in its 2026 Article IV Consultation report. The Fund while highlighting a statistical discrepancy, pointed out that certain expenditures were not fully reported in official government documents, which affects the clarity of Nigeria’s actual fiscal deficit.
Though this was not an open allegation of missing funds, the Federal Government promptly dismissed it through the Ministry of Finance and insisted that the allegation of unlawful or “secret” off-budget spending didn’t exist stating that expenditures—such as statutory transfers and lawful interventions—are legally backed, publicly disclosed, and subject to audits, but captured differently across various accounting frameworks. The revelation triggered mixed reactions from political leaders including the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, and his counterpart in the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, who both criticized the administration over fiscal transparency and demanded immediate investigations into unbudgeted expenditures.
Therefore, it is against the backdrop of the seeming opacity in the federal budgeting process that we demand a speedy implementation of both the outstanding 2025 and 2026 budgets and a return to the January to December cycle to completely eliminate the rollover of appropriation acts in the near future as well as challenge the executive to prepare a realistic budget that would match the nation’s projected revenues with expenditures in the 2027 fiscal year. It must not be business as usual considering that a new administration may assume power on May 29, next year. The federal estimates should be realistic and balanced and devoid of bloated figures that have been the trend in the past few years.
Nigerians must reap the full benefits of the annual budget in the same financial year rather than defer such goodies to another year. They can no longer cope with such excruciating fiscal deficit as N13.51 trillion recorded in the 2024 budget; approximately ₦13.08 trillion out of N54.2 trillion total expenditure framework in 2025 appropriation act and a whopping N31.45trillion fiscal deficit contained in the federal N68.32 trillion 2026 budget being financed primarily through fresh domestic and international borrowings. Government must stop exacerbating the current frightening debt burden in the national interest and that of generations unborn.
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