The Co-founder of BudgIT Foundation, Seun Onigbinde, 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”, and the process has lost any sense of fiscal discipline, planning, and accountability.
He said the implementation of multiple budgets by the federal government’s has created massive confusion in project execution and financial reporting.
Onigbinde said there was no justification for extending the 2023 and 2024 budgets into 2025, saying this has seriously distorted fiscal management and weakened public trust in the budgeting process.
He said that although President Bola Tinubu signed the 2025 budget in March, partial capital implementation only began in October.
“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.”
Onigbinde 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.
Onigbinde 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.”
The BudgIT Co-founder said under former President Muhammadu Buhari, there was at least a framework that ensured the budget cycle ran from January 1 to December 31, a covenant which the Tinubu administration has broken.
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.”
Onigbinde 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.
The BudgIT Co-founder 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.
“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.”
Already, even lawmakers in the National Assembly have raised concerns about the triple budgets running side by side could destabilize Nigeria’s fragile economy and lead to inflationary pressures.
Senators and House of Representatives members are also disappointed that capital allocations to Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) were not released adequately or on time.
This has stalled the implementation of constituency projects which lawmakers leverage on to contribute to the development of their constituencies.
Some of the aggrieved lawmakers have also heavily criticized the centralized payment system adopted by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, claiming it has paralised MDAs. With the brewing crisis of confidence, and in exercise of their oversight functions,
Former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, agreed on Thursday after a visit to President Tinubu that, the delayed release of capital funds in the 2025 budget is hindering many lawmakers from delivering constituency projects across the country.
Lawan, who led the Senate between 2019 and 2023 and currently represents Yobe North Senatorial District, said members of the National Assembly are pushing to ensure that the capital component of the budget is fully implemented so projects can spread equitably across the country.
Lawan appeared cautious, offering guarded comments that avoided directly criticising the presidency while responding to questions about the federal government’s failure to release capital project funds, a situation that has left many local contractors stranded,
Still, he acknowledged the lingering challenge.
“Well, I am sure you visit the National Assembly from time to time, and you will notice that the members of the National Assembly are still working hard to ensure that the necessary steps are taken, the procedures and processes are done for the constituency projects to be implemented.
“But we also care about the implementation of the total budget of the country, not only constituency projects, and therefore we are still on it. Some of our colleagues have had constituency projects implemented to a certain level of some percentage.
“But make no mistake, we are not one eyed, we are not narrow minded. We are purely nationalistic and patriotic. We want the project to be implemented fully for all parts of the country, regardless of whether they are constituency projects or the normal budgets provisions,” he said.
