- Capital releases belie actual budgets
- Transport: Only N2.57bn of N256.73bn
- Health/Social Welfare: Only N36m of N218bn
- Women Affairs: Only N394.8m of N89.8bn
- Housing: Zero
- Marine/Blue Economy: Only N202m of N3.53bn.
Revelations by top leaders of some federal ministries, departments and agencies are exposing the shambolic yet scandalous nature of Nigeria’s budget management and implementation by the Tinubu administration in the last three years.
Data disclosed by ministers show the extraordinary mismatches between amounts budgeted to be spent and actual amounts that are eventually released, a situation that shows how much political leaders in the central government have been deceiving the population, experts say.
In what would pass for a shambolic handling of Nigeria’s budgets in the last three years, it has emerged that no budget since 2023 has been fully implemented within a single cycle.
In the 2026 budgeting round, the Nigerian government is simultaneously implementing the 2024 and 2025 budgets which have even now been carried over to 2026 because of the failure of the government to fully implement them during their time-frame.
Analysts say the first sign that the administration would be challenged managing budgets showed up early when it took over the implementation of the 2023 budget of the Buhari administration.
Marcel Okeke, an economist and public affairs analyst, in an op-ed piece published in this newspaper, noted that the administration, after inheriting the 2023 budget from May 29, 2023, “ended up messing it up after dragging parts of it into subsequent years.”
In the subsequent years 2024 and 2025, and now into 2026, the shambolic management of the Nigerian budgets are now evidenced by the amount budgeted and the releases made against them that are now becoming public knowledge.
Okeke notes that just before the end of December 2025 the National Assembly approved a ‘revised’ N43.56 trillion 2024 Appropriation Act, and a ‘reworked’ 2025 budget of N48.31 trillion which extended the life of the budgets through the passage of the Appropriation (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bills.
“A strange legislative hatchet job to keep rolling over expired budgets. Purportedly, the capital components in both budgets are to be completed by end-March 2026,” lamented Okeke.
Besides what Okeke called the rolling over of expired budgets, a major scandalous episode in Nigeria’s budget management since May 29, 2023, has been shown in the mismatched capital releases exposed during the ongoing budget defence sessions by MDA leaders, including ministers in some cases.
Amid the euphoria that has often followed the announcements of big numbers as allocation for capital spending, believed by analysts and economic operators to be right tonic to give the economy a lift, the revelations at the 2026 budget defence sessions show the monumental deception of Nigerians by the administration with regards to promises made in the budget and what they have been delivering.
For instance, some revelations show that many MDAs recorded zero percent capital fund release both in 2024 and 2025. According to Okeke, “the defense sessions exposed the massive breakdown in the fiscal chain, where billions of naira were appropriated on paper in 2025, but the treasury released not a dime for most critical sectors.”
Specifically, it came to light that for the Ministry of Transport, whereas N256.73 billion was allocated in the 2025 budget, only about N2.57 billion or roughly one percent got released.
Some of the revelations actually came from ministers and directors. Saidu Ahmed Alkali, the minister of transport, disclosed that his ministry recorded about 59 percent overhead utilisation in 2025, while capital releases stood at roughly one percent, “and were largely not cash-backed.”
Other scandalous disclosures were made by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, which said they also received a negligible fraction of their approved capital allocation in 2025.
Specifically, it got just N36 million out of the N218 billion appropriated for capital projects, amounting to just 0.0165 percent!
A sensitive ministry such as the Ministry of Interior, received zero capital budget releases for two consecutive years: 2024 and 2025, and Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the minister in charge, lamented how this left agencies under his ministry “struggling to upgrade facilities, modernize operations or expand infrastructure.”
Other revelations which show the scandalous management and implementation of the budgeting rounds by the Tinubu administration were those made by the management of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, which received only N394.8 million out of the N89.8 billion approved for the ministry’s capital expenditure in 2025; the Ministry of Housing, which got zero funding for its capital projects in the 2025 budget; and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, which received N202 million out of its N3.53 billion capital allocation for 2025, representing 1.7 percent.
However shambolic the situation appears to be, exposing the failings of the administration in this regard, senior ministers were offering a consolatory statement about the budget running concurrently as if this represented something positive.
Wale Edun, minister for finance and coordinating minister of the economy, admitted before the Senate Committee on Appropriation that the 2024 and 2025 budgets were still running; albeit in the first quarter of 2026.
Edun’s position that the budgets for the past years have not been closed was given life by Doris Uzoka-Anite, minister of state for finance, but with a twist.
According to Uzoka-Anite, the federal government was proposing the implementation of just 30 percent of the 2025 capital budget before the end of November 2026.
In this proposal, which is said to have come from Uzoka-Anite, the remaining 70 percent would be “rolled over to the 2026 capital budget to ensure seamless implementation.”
“At the root of all these conflicting and confusing prevarications is the view canvassed by the tax tsar, Zacch Adedeji, who pointed out that the budgets in the past couple of years had literally amounted to building castles in the air. In other words, the federal annual budgets have been like fantasies that lack a solid foundation,” writes Okeke in his op-ed piece.
As if accepting the errors of government on this, Zacch Adedeji, executive chairman, Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), told the same Senate committee that “unrealistic projections hinder effective budget implementation,” noting that: “Budget funding must come from realistic projections. Efficiency is not about the size of the budget but about how much can actually be implemented.”
While it is not clear how the government will get out of the hole it has dug for itself through its unrealistic projections, amid dwindling revenues, there are implications which Nigerians need to come to terms with upfront.
“The implications of all these, especially the non-funding of the capital budgets, would include growing infrastructure deficit, poor service delivery, increased public debt burden, corruption and mismanagement, economic stagnation, among others,” said Okeke.
