Follow Us on Google
The disclosure by the International Monetary Fund’s Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, that about two per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), estimated to be about ₦8.83 trillion, was spent outside recorded budgetary channels and appropriation approvals, ought to have provoked sober introspection from the Government of Nigeria. This is because the disclosure bothers on transparency, integrity and accountability. It is about looking at the figures when the books don’t add up. Sadly, it did not provoke introspection from the government. It only forced a denial. Yes, denial, the first line of defence in government business.
The Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, moved very quickly to characterise the Fund’s finding as a matter of statistical presentation. For him, there was no substance to it. He insisted that the government had no “shadow budget” and that every kobo spent by the Federal Government passed through the constitutional and statutory framework governing public finance, including appropriation by the National Assembly. That defence, however lawyerly, cannot survive interrogation posed by a challenge using facts that are already in the public domain, and precisely, it is this sort of impulsive denial that erodes whatever credibility is left in Nigeria’s fiscal governance.
What the IMF offered us was not a vague impression. It gave us a figure, and also showed the methodology on how it arrived at the numbers. Then, it gave a warning that capital expenditure worth roughly ₦8.8 trillion had been executed and financed without appearing in official budget documents or implementation reports. That IMF position underscored Nigeria’s true fiscal deficit and its actual borrowing requirement. For those who deeply understand IMF systems and money issues, this is not a quarrel over formatting conventions, but exposes our government as one that borrows and spends more than it discloses. The IMF position says that our government is not merely being untidy with paperwork, but that it is concealing the true scale of its liabilities from the National Assembly, from creditors, and from the citizens who will ultimately service the debt. To now dismiss this flimsily as a question of “comprehensiveness and timing” of reporting, as Oyedele has done, is to treat a solvency and accountability challenge as a clerical inconvenience.
Interestingly, the government’s defence supplies the standard by which it must be judged. Sections 80 to 83 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, are unambiguous in their provisions that no money may be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund except as authorised by an Appropriation Act or other law of the National Assembly. If that principle is taken seriously, then every major capital project the government has undertaken without a corresponding, transparent line item in an appropriation instrument is, on its face, a constitutional infraction, regardless of whether officials prefer to describe it as a rollover, a multi-year commitment, or an intervention mechanism. Citizens are not obligated to accept understatements in place of appropriations.
For instance, the government had embarked on several flagship projects that illustrate the habit that the IMF has now quantified as part of what constitutes the 2%. The Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, a multi-billion-dollar corridor spanning several states, is one. The road was launched by the incumbent government and has proceeded through successive phases without the detailed, itemised budgetary disclosure that a project of its scale and cost ought to command. The Sokoto-Badagry expressway is another one. It is an equally ambitious trans-national corridor. It has also advanced with contractors mobilised, and funds reportedly committed, even as independent scrutiny of its financing within approved appropriations has remained elusive. The acquisition of a new presidential aircraft, a purchase running into tens of billions of naira at a time when the government was repeatedly pleading fiscal constraint to justify subsidy removal and tax increases, sits uneasily beside public appeals for shared sacrifice. None of these projects is secret. All are widely reported, publicly discussed, and in some cases proudly announced by government officials themselves. What is missing is not information about their existence, but evidence that the National Assembly appropriated the specific amounts being spent on them, in the specific manner the Constitution recommends.
It is imprudent for a government that is confident in the legality and transparency of its spending not to welcome an external audit of the kind the IMF has implicitly invited by identifying the discrepancies in its books. Rather than humbly open its books to audit, the government is engaged in a contest over the characterisation of the finding while almost nothing to produce the underlying documentation that would prove that the IMF was indeed wrong. That’s enough to settle the matter. IMF’s observation is not a partisan one. It comes from a body whose previous reports about Nigeria’s fiscal progress and economic projections were celebrated. Rejecting this observation while accepting the economic growth projections is funny. It leaves the public with a perception which does not favour the government. Therefore, when government spokespersons describe a figure as large as ₦8.8 trillion as a matter of presentation, while simultaneously refusing to publish a project-by-project reconciliation showing where every naira of that sum was appropriated, they invite the very suspicion they claim to be dispelling. In this case, denial without documentation is not accountability. It is evasion dressed in technical gown.
Other News
But it comes with consequences. The consequences of this extend well beyond bookkeeping. First, it distorts citizens’ understanding of Nigeria’s true indebtedness, since spending financed outside the budget must still be financed somehow, typically through borrowing, Central Bank overdrafts, or diversions from other revenue streams, none of which are costless. Second, it weakens legislative oversight as the National Assembly cannot scrutinise, amend, or reject spending it never formally approved. Third, it corrodes procurement discipline as projects executed outside the budget cycle often escape competitive bidding and due process safeguards that appropriated projects are, at least in principle, subject to as required by the constitution. Fourth, and most corrosively, it deepens public scepticism at a moment when the government is asking Nigerians to endure subsidy removal, currency depreciation, and tax reform in the name of fiscal responsibility. Therefore, it is difficult, and risky, to ask citizens to tighten their belts while shielding several trillion naira in spending from the very oversight mechanisms those citizens’ representatives are meant to exercise on their behalf.
If, however, the federal government wishes to be taken seriously that no funds were spent unlawfully, the remedy is straightforward and lies entirely within its own power. It should publish a full, project-level reconciliation of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto-Badagry Expressway, the presidential aircraft procurement, and every other project the IMF’s figure implicates. The publications must show precisely which appropriation instrument authorised each tranche of spending and when.
It should submit these reconciliations to the Auditor-General of the Federation and to the Public Accounts Committees of both chambers of the National Assembly for independent verification, not just to its spokesperson and communication apparatus for rebuttal. Government should also commit to a timeline for closing the reporting gap the IMF has identified, rather than disputing the gap’s existence. Lastly, it should stop treating requests for transparency as attacks on the administration’s legitimacy, when in fact they are the ordinary demands of constitutional democracy and legitimate governments.
Get me right! The Nigerian government is entitled to defend its record, but it is not entitled to substitute claim for evidence. The IMF’s finding is specific. It is sourced from the Fund’s own Article IV consultation process, and it is consistent with what is already visible to any attentive observer of the country’s major infrastructure and procurement announcements since 2023. A government that truly has nothing to hide would meet such a finding with disclosure, not denial.
Until the Federal Government produces the documentation to match its confident language, Nigerians are entitled to conclude that the IMF has simply said loudly what the country’s own budget books have long failed to record; and that is that a significant share of public spending in Nigeria continues to happen outside the accountability structures the Nigerian Constitution demands. Restoring public trust in government in this regard will require more than a press statement contesting a percentage. It will require opening the books.
