On 31 March 2026, the National Assembly passed a ₦68.3 trillion budget — the largest in Nigeria’s history. The number is eye-catching. The implementation record behind it is not.
| ₦68.3tn Total 2026 appropriation — up ₦10 trillion from the original presidential proposal | 18% Capital budget actually spent by end of September 2025 in the prior year | 61% Federal revenue collected versus target by Q3 2025 |
A Budget Inflated Before It Begins
When President Tinubu presented the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly in December 2025, it carried a price tag of ₦58.18 trillion. By the time the Assembly passed it on 31 March 2026, that figure had grown to ₦68.323 trillion — an increase of roughly ₦10 trillion, or about 17%, in the space of a few months.
The additions broke down in revealing ways. Some ₦5.71 trillion represented unfinished projects carried over from 2025 — work that was budgeted, funded in theory, and not delivered. A further ₦2 trillion was added for what the legislature designated ‘priority projects.’ The oil price benchmark was revised upward from $64.85 to $75 per barrel to accommodate the expanded spending envelope. And ₦6 billion in new external borrowing was approved, adding further to a national debt already estimated above $150 billion.
The ₦5.71 trillion in project rollovers is not a technical accounting adjustment — it is a direct admission that the 2025 budget failed to deliver what it promised. Carrying unfinished work forward normalises a cycle where budgets are passed, funds are allocated, and infrastructure is not built.
The Execution Gap: Where Budgets Go to Die
Nigeria’s budget credibility problem is not in the numbers that go in. It is in the results that come out. The 2025 implementation data, presented by the President himself when introducing the 2026 budget, made this plain.
By the end of September 2025, the federal government had collected ₦18.6 trillion in revenue — just 61% of its target. Of the capital budget — the spending that builds roads, hospitals, schools, and infrastructure — only ₦3.1 trillion had been disbursed by that point, roughly 18% of the allocation. The same pattern held in 2024, where the Budget Office’s own Q3 implementation report documented low capital utilisation by the third quarter of the year. Implementation only improved after the fiscal year was extended into 2025 — a workaround that has itself become a fixture of Nigerian budget management.
When a government allocates capital spending and spends only 18% of it by September, the budget is not a plan for national development. It is a projection of aspiration.
The Rollover Trap
The National Assembly has previously criticised the recurring practice of rolling unfinished projects from one budget into the next. The 2026 budget contains ₦5.71 trillion of exactly that. This is not a new observation, and it is not a new problem. What is striking is that the same legislature that has raised concerns about rollovers then passed a budget that embeds them at scale and in the same session extended the 2025 capital budget implementation deadline to June 2026.
That extension directly contradicts a specific commitment made by President Tinubu in December 2025: that Nigeria would henceforth operate on a single budget backed by a single revenue cycle, with no overlaps or rollovers. The promise lasted less than four months. The June 2026 extension means Nigeria is now simultaneously implementing two budgets — precisely the overlapping arrangement the President said would end.
The coexistence of the 2025 capital extension and the freshly passed 2026 budget is not a minor procedural overlap. It is a structural accountability failure — one that makes it impossible for the public, the legislature, or independent monitors to clearly track which budget is financing which project, and whether either is being delivered on time.
Transparency: The Law Says 30 Days. The Reality Is Months.
Budget transparency in Nigeria has a legal framework. Section 30(2) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 requires quarterly budget implementation reports to be published within 30 days of each quarter’s end. In practice, this deadline is routinely missed by months.
For 2025, the Q1 and Q2 budget implementation reports were published on the Budget Office website only in December 2025 — well beyond the statutory window. As of 31 March 2026, only reports up to Q2 2025 were publicly available. The Q3 and Q4 2025 reports had not been published. Citizens, civil society organisations, researchers, and legislators trying to assess how the 2025 budget was being spent could not do so on the basis of official, timely information.
This is not a trivial procedural lapse. Late and incomplete reporting breaks the feedback loop that allows the National Assembly to exercise meaningful oversight. A legislature that cannot assess implementation in real time cannot intervene when execution goes wrong. It can only observe the damage after the fact.
The Assembly’s Accountability Obligation
The passage of the 2026 budget is the beginning of the legislature’s fiscal responsibility, not the end of it. The National Assembly has significant constitutional and statutory tools available to enforce budget discipline: the power to summon ministers and agency heads for oversight hearings, the authority to query implementation reports, and the ability to refer non-compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Public Procurement Act to relevant enforcement bodies.
Those tools have been used inconsistently. Oversight hearings are held, but follow-through is uneven. Implementation reports are produced late, but the consequence is rarely more than criticism. The cycle — ambitious budget, weak execution, low accountability, fresh ambitious budget — has repeated itself across administrations.
The 2026 budget, at ₦68.3 trillion, is the largest statement of public intent Nigeria has ever made in a single fiscal year. Whether it translates into delivery — into roads completed, hospitals staffed, schools built, and infrastructure commissioned — depends less on the size of the figure than on the quality of the oversight that follows it. PLAC calls on the National Assembly to use its oversight powers to hold the executive accountable.