By Camillus Eboh
ABUJA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has asked parliament to approve a 43.56 trillion naira ($29.96 billion) spending plan that repeals and re-enacts the 2024 budget to run through December 2025, aiming to end overlapping fiscal cycles from recent years and tighten controls on public finances.
The move follows months of criticism by lawmakers over the government’s reliance on rolling over capital budgets, which led to the 2024 capital spending being extended first to June and then to December 2025.
The proposal aims to reset budget discipline in Africa’s most populous country, after years of missed January-December cycles that have muddled planning, eroded accountability, and undermined trust in government spending. Lawmakers now want a hard reset to a clean calendar-year cycle starting in 2026.
In a letter read by Speaker Tajudeen Abbas on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Tinubu said the proposed repeal-and-reenactment bill would authorise withdrawals from the federal account and allocate 1.74 trillion naira for statutory transfers, 8.27 trillion naira for debt service, 11.27 trillion naira for recurrent spending, and 22.28 trillion naira for capital projects under a single framework.
Tinubu said the measure would “bring an end to the practice of running multiple budgets concurrently” and improve capital project execution after repeated rollovers of 2024 spending into 2025 alongside a separate 54.99 trillion naira 2025 budget.
($1 = 1,453.7800 naira)
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo, editing by Ed Osmond)
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