Former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi has raised concerns over Nigeria’s fiscal management, questioning which budget the country is effectively implementing as the Senate moves closer to approving the 2026 national budget.
In a statement via his X handle, Obi said Nigeria appears to be operating multiple budgets simultaneously, noting that as recently as last year, projects linked to the 2023, 2024 and 2025 budgets were still being implemented at the same time.
According to him, the practice departs from established public finance norms and raises serious questions about fiscal discipline, planning and accountability.
Obi recalled that President Bola Tinubu assumed office in May 2023 with a legally enacted ₦21.83 trillion budget, followed months later by a ₦2.17 trillion supplementary budget. He noted that the supplementary appropriation attracted criticism over its timing and priorities, particularly as Nigerians were adjusting to major economic reforms.
He argued that rather than closing out the 2023 fiscal cycle, the budget was expanded repeatedly without a clearly defined implementation end date.
The former Anambra State governor said the trend continued with the passage of a ₦35.06 trillion budget for 2024 and a ₦54.99 trillion budget for 2025, bringing total appropriations under the current administration to over ₦114 trillion in less than three years.
Despite the scale of spending approvals, Obi said budget implementation has remained weak, failing to reach 50 per cent in most cases. He described this gap as a crisis of budget credibility that undermines effective public spending.
He also criticised the federal government’s decision to repeal the 2024 and 2025 budgets and re-enact them with extended implementation timelines, noting that the revised budgets have not been made public.
According to Obi, the absence of published re-enacted budgets makes it difficult for Nigerians to know which capital projects are being implemented, their costs and how spending priorities may have changed.
The statement further alleged that declining fiscal transparency was deliberate. Obi said the federal government has stopped publishing treasury reports on the OpenTreasury platform, a transparency framework introduced by the previous administration. He added that no budget implementation report was released in 2025, regardless of performance.
He warned that operating overlapping budgets without clear timelines or public disclosure weakens public scrutiny and undermines long-term economic planning.
Obi called for a return to a clear January-to-December budget cycle, saying this would improve transparency, strengthen accountability and restore public confidence in Nigeria’s budget process.
The Senate is expected to conclude consideration of the 2026 budget later this month.
