Nigeria’s budget system in shambles – BudgIT

Co-founder of BudgIT Foundation, Seun Onigbinde, has described Nigeria’s budgeting process as chaotic and uncoordinated, saying the system has completely broken down and lost direction. Speaking on Channels Television during an interview on Wednesday, Onigbinde said the federal government’s budgeting framework “is in shambles,” adding that the process has lost any sense of fiscal discipline, […]

Co-founder of BudgIT Foundation, Seun Onigbinde, has described Nigeria’s budgeting process as chaotic and uncoordinated, saying the system has completely broken down and lost direction.

Speaking on Channels Television during an interview on Wednesday, Onigbinde said the federal government’s budgeting framework “is in shambles,” adding that the process has lost any sense of fiscal discipline, planning, or accountability.

He said the federal government has continued to extend multiple budgets beyond their calendar years, creating confusion in project execution and financial reporting.

He noted that both the 2023 and 2024 budgets were extended into 2025 without proper justification, warning that such extensions distort fiscal management and weaken public trust in the budgeting process.

He explained that although President Bola Tinubu signed the 2025 budget earlier in the year, capital implementation only began in October, several months into the fiscal year.

Onigbinde said the delay showed a clear disconnect in how the government manages its fiscal responsibilities, stressing that such a pattern exposes a deep structural challenge in the federal government’s financial system.

He said, “The president signed the 2025 budget around March, but we are only starting capital implementation in October. It shows that there is a challenge in the fiscal structure of the federal government.”

He added that as of the third quarter of 2025, the government has yet to release any implementation report for the year, meaning there is no record for the first and second quarters of budget execution.

He said this lack of documentation means Nigerians cannot even tell which projects are being implemented or how significant they are to national development.

He explained that proper fiscal practice demands that once a budget year ends, the government should close accounts, mop up unspent funds, and present a supplementary budget — not continuously extend old budgets into new year.

He said, “You don’t keep extending the budget life to another 18 months or 12 months. It creates distortion. What we have now is the 2024 budget extended into 2025, and we are asking when the 2025 budget even begins.”

Onigbinde added that the current situation shows that Nigeria has become unserious about its fiscal progress, noting that poor coordination between the Budget Office, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, and the Ministry of Finance has worsened the problem.

He explained that the breakdown in coordination rests on the table of the president, who, he said, must take responsibility for ensuring that the various fiscal agencies work in harmony.

He added that under former President Muhammadu Buhari, there was at least a framework that ensured the budget cycle ran from January 1 to December 31, even if the presentation came late.

He said the current administration had “broken that covenant,” noting that there was no longer a predictable budget calendar guiding fiscal operations.

He said, “Sometimes the budget under Buhari was presented late, but they made sure that on the first day of the year, the budget was signed into law. What we have now is a system without a calendar, and that is really unfortunate.”

Onigbinde noted that the current situation has left the country without any credible fiscal direction, adding that as of November 12, 2025, there was still no Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) document or proposed 2026 budget before the Federal Executive Council.

He said this was a clear sign of how far fiscal discipline had deteriorated.

He added that in previous administrations, budgets were sometimes presented as early as October to allow for adequate scrutiny before the year ended, but the current government had failed to sustain that tradition.

Onigbinde explained that the consequences of the delay were already visible in the poor implementation of capital projects and the rising frustration among contractors.

He said, “By the time you look at the capital expenditure for 2024, it was put around N12 trillion, but we only used N6 trillion. That’s a 50 percent capital performance. And don’t forget that the 2024 capital performance extended into 2025. So technically, we have not executed anything new in 2025.”

He added that even if the government releases a 2025 implementation report, it would only capture recurrent expenditure such as salaries and overheads, not capital projects, because those projects had yet to take off.

He said the country’s debt servicing cost had nearly doubled, rising from N6.86 trillion to N12.36 trillion, while revenue figures, though higher in nominal terms, were still inadequate to fund the scale of the federal budget.

He explained that federal government revenue grew from N12.4 trillion in 2023 to N20.98 trillion in 2024,  a jump of about N8 trillion, but that the improvement was largely a reflection of naira devaluation rather than real productivity.

He said the federal government had targeted N25 trillion in revenue in 2024 but realised only N21 trillion, a gap that widened its fiscal deficit.

He added that despite the higher numbers, borrowing had become inevitable because most of the revenue was being used for debt servicing, statutory transfers, and overhead costs, leaving little or nothing for capital expenditure.

He explained, “No matter how exciting the revenue figures might look, they still don’t meet the quota. By the time you account for statutory transfers and other recurrent costs, there’s technically nothing left for capital projects unless you borrow.”

He said the federal government must resist the temptation to revert to the “dark days” when the Central Bank of Nigeria was used as a “piggy bank” to fund deficits.

He added that the National Assembly must also take responsibility by cutting down on unnecessary insertions and supporting the executive in prioritising key capital projects.

He said, “If that does not happen, we will keep having bloated capital budgets that are never executed, which is exactly the situation we are in now.”

He noted that many contractors were still protesting unpaid contracts that had been completed for more than a year, a sign of how deep the fiscal crisis had become.

He said the president must urgently set clear spending priorities, and where resources fall short, prepare supplementary budgets rather than carry over old budgets indefinitely.

He added, “The president should set his priorities right. If anything within his priorities does not have the resources to back it up, make it a supplementary budget and move it forward to the next year.”

He said the lopsided implementation of the budget was not helpful for national development and could derail public confidence in government institutions.

He said, “This lopsided budget implementation is not helpful for national development in any way. What we need is clarity, accountability, and coordination.”