The Numbers Don’t Add Up: Nigeria’s Fiscal System Is Slipping into Crisis
John Onyeukwu
How missing reports, delayed budgets and trillion-naira oil claims signal a breakdown of public-finance governance.
By John Onyeukwu
Published in the Policy and Reform column of Business a.m. newspaper, on Monday December 8, 2025. Pull out attached
In every economy, public finance is the clearest mirror of governance discipline. It tells citizens whether leaders are serious, markets whether numbers can be trusted, and investors whether the government is in control. Today, Nigeria is failing that test. The Federal Government has gone silent on budget implementation, failed to present the 2026 Appropriation Bill within the established calendar, and allowed the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to drop a fiscal bombshell: ₦17.1 trillion allegedly spent on pipeline protection and energy-security operations linked to fuel subsidy.
Even for a country accustomed to fiscal surprises, this moment is alarming. It signals a deeper collapse of transparency, coordination and fiscal credibility at a time when the nation can least afford uncertainty.
For five years, Nigeria maintained the discipline of a predictable January–December budget cycle. That stability has now unraveled. By late November 2025, the Federal Government had still not transmitted the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly, and the silence surrounding this delay has become increasingly troubling.
Even more unusual is the inversion taking place across the federation. States such as Lagos, Oyo, Abia, Plateau and Osun have already presented their 2026 budgets, ahead of the federal government. This development is unprecedented in Nigeria’s fiscal history. Traditionally, Abuja sets the macro-fiscal framework, including oil-price benchmarks, revenue projections, FAAC assumptions and debt-service parameters, and states calibrate their plans accordingly. This year, however, the federal Centre appears to have abandoned that leadership role.
On Wednesday, December 3, 2025, the Federal Executive Council approved the 2026–2028 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), projecting ₦34.3 trillion in revenue for 2026. Rather than restoring clarity to Nigeria’s fiscal trajectory, the approval exposed a deeper contradiction: the government has endorsed medium-term assumptions but still has not transmitted the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly, leaving the budget process in limbo. Instead of initiating coordinated fiscal planning, the MTEF highlighted the widening gap between statutory requirements and actual governance practice. A ₦34.3 trillion revenue projection means little without missing Budget Implementation Reports, credible revenue-performance data, or explanations for NNPCL’s ₦17.1 trillion energy-security claims. Nigeria now has medium-term projections without short-term accountability, a fiscal posture as risky as budgeting without a compass.
The implications are immediate and troubling. States are now budgeting in the dark, without guidance from national revenue expectations. Procurement planning for the first quarter of 2026 is effectively frozen because ministries and agencies cannot make spending commitments without a federal appropriation. Investors are struggling to price risk with accuracy, given the absence of federal fiscal signals. And Parliament is unable to interrogate government performance without timely data from the Budget Office.
In effect, fiscal coordination has broken down, quietly, but catastrophically. The country is drifting into a new year without the anchors that ensure stability, predictability and accountability in public finance.
The Budget Office’s Quarterly Budget Implementation Reports (BIRs) are not bureaucratic paperwork; they are the backbone of Nigeria’s fiscal accountability architecture. These reports make it possible for citizens, civil society actors, legislators, donors and markets to understand whether the federal budget is being executed as approved, how revenues are performing, whether capital projects are being funded, and how recurrent spending aligns with legal appropriations. In a system where trust is already thin, BIRs provide the minimum level of transparency required for oversight, debt planning, procurement sequencing and donor coordination.
Yet, throughout 2024 and now deep into 2025, these reports have either not been released on schedule, or in most cases not released at all. The delay is not benign; it is systemic. This is not the familiar clerical backlog that once plagued Nigeria’s budget institutions. It is a collapse in transparency at the very moment when fiscal discipline is most needed. In the absence of these reports, oversight becomes guesswork because legislators and watchdogs lack any authoritative record of actual spending. Capital projects, many of which already suffer from multi-year abandonment, become invisible in the fog of non-reporting, with no public trace of whether funds were released or diverted. Off-book spending, long a feature of Nigeria’s fiscal dysfunction, thrives when no quarterly reconciliation is published to expose gaps, leakages or inflated claims. Meanwhile, arrears accumulate quietly, as MDAs continue spending in the dark without the constraint of quarterly disclosure.
When a government refuses neglects or hesitates to account for how it spends public money, governance itself becomes opaque. And opacity is not neutral; it is fertile soil for misuse, misallocation and the quiet erosion of public institutions. At a time when inflation is at historic highs, debt service is crowding out development spending, and the federal government claims to be tightening fiscal controls, the disappearance of BIRs signals a disturbing reversal, a retreat from the accountability standards Nigeria committed to under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, Open Government Partnership, and its own Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.
In November 2025, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), led by Group CEO Bashir Bayo Ojulari, released its 2024 financials. Hidden in the disclosures was a figure that stunned the country: ₦17.1 trillion allegedly spent on pipeline protection and related ‘energy security’ costs tied to fuel-subsidy under-recovery. The number was staggering, not just for its size, but for what it revealed about the federal government’s growing fiscal opacity.
To put it in perspective, ₦17.1 trillion exceeds the entire 2024 federal budget, dwarfs Nigeria’s multi-year capital spending, and surpasses the GDP of several African economies. No national oil company anywhere posts security expenses remotely close to this. Even at the peak of Nigeria’s oil-theft crisis, security costs never approached trillion-naira levels. The figure therefore raises more questions than answers.
Who received these contracts? Under which procurement rules? Was this actual spending, an accrual, or an accounting device for subsidy under-recovery? Why is NNPCL portraying it as debt owed by the Federation? And where is the independent audit such a claim demands?
What is clear is that the petrol subsidy was never removed; it was simply relocated into NNPCL’s books, now resurfacing as an unfunded liability. In a fiscally strained country, this is not merely misleading; it is dangerous.
Across the world, successful national oil companies such as Equinor, Aramco, Petronas and Petrobras operate within strict transparency frameworks. They separate subsidy management from commercial operations, release regular audited accounts, openly disclose security and operational costs, and maintain predictable remittance schedules to their national treasuries. These practices are now global norms, designed to insulate public finances from manipulation and ensure that national oil wealth remains traceable and accountable.
NNPCL is drifting in the opposite direction. Its opaque disclosures, blurred lines between subsidy and commercial activity, and inconsistent remittance patterns place Nigeria increasingly at odds with international standards. Even Ghana’s GNPC, managing a far smaller petroleum sector, provides clearer quasi-fiscal reporting than Africa’s largest oil producer. The consequence is that Nigeria is becoming one of the least transparent jurisdictions on the continent in terms of oil-sector accounting.
Investors have not missed the signal. International markets are already pricing in the uncertainty, risk premiums are rising, and donor confidence continues to thin. Ultimately, it is citizens who bear the cost, through higher borrowing, reduced public investment and a deepening crisis of trust in government institutions.
Nigeria’s public finance crisis is no longer defined by a single figure or institution; it is the accumulation of failures that signal a government steadily losing grip on its own fiscal machinery. The absence of a timetable for the 2026 budget, the disappearance or extreme delay of Budget Implementation Reports, and the national oil company’s announcement of trillions in unverifiable liabilities all point to the same conclusion: the state is drifting without a coherent fiscal compass. In countries with strong institutions, such a convergence would trigger an emergency response. In Nigeria, it is unfolding without official explanation or urgency.
The consequences are neither abstract nor distant. When fiscal signals become incoherent, interest rates respond. Inflation expectations shift upward. Foreign exchange markets grow more volatile. Debt becomes harder and more expensive to sustain. Investor confidence weakens, procurement stalls, capital projects slow, and the welfare of citizens, from salaries to social services, becomes vulnerable.
To regain credibility, the Federal Government must move quickly. It should release all pending Budget Implementation Reports for 2024 and 2025, because transparency is a statutory obligation, not a discretionary gesture. The 2026 Appropriation Bill must be presented without further delay to restore the January–December cycle that previously helped stabilise planning. NNPCL’s extraordinary ₦17.1 trillion claims require an independent forensic audit; nothing less can restore trust. The details of all pipeline protection and subsidy-related contracts, beneficiaries, values, procurement processes and outputs must be published. Federal–state fiscal coordination must be rebuilt; a fragmented approach creates 37 separate and unaligned budget systems. If subsidies remain, they must be returned to the federal budget openly, debated and appropriated. And Nigeria should institute mandatory quarterly fiscal briefing.
Nigeria is approaching 2026 with unanswered questions, missing reports, a delayed budget, and multi-trillion-naira disclosures that defy economic logic. Citizens must reject the slow normalisation of opacity. Public finance underpins development, trust and stability; when the financial architecture collapses, national governance follows.
Nigeria is too important, too strained and too exposed to global shocks to be governed through fiscal silence. Transparency and accountability must return to the centre of statecraft, not as slogans, but as the foundations without which the economy cannot stand.
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