Harrison EDEH
The Nigerian government under Bola Ahmed Tinubu has significantly raised the national budgets but poor cash-backing and funding led to hardship in many Nigerian households.
Further findings have also shown how weak capital execution, rising debt service, inflation, and unfunded social programmes continue to weigh on Nigerians.
The Advocate Times review of the federal government Budget Implementation Reports in the last three years shows that it rose from ₦21.83 trillion in 2023 to ₦28.78 trillion in 2024 and then jumped to ₦54.99 trillion in 2025.
Supplementary budgets of ₦2.17 trillion and ₦6.2 trillion in 2023 and 2024, respectively, further expanded government spending plans.
However, the sharp increase in nominal expenditure has coincided with a deterioration in the purchasing power of households.
The evidence from the Federal government’s fiscal outturns suggests that more money in the budget has not necessarily meant more money reaching projects, services and welfare programmes that directly affect Nigerians.
In 2023, actual aggregate expenditure stood at ₦23.04 trillion, including ₦6.37 trillion in capital expenditure and ₦6.86 trillion in debt service.
By 2024, actual expenditure rose to ₦34.49 trillion, but the composition of spending revealed growing fiscal pressure.
Debt service crowds out dev’t spending
The 2024 amended budget projected ₦35.06 trillion in aggregate expenditure, but debt service climbed to ₦12.36 trillion against a budget of ₦8.05 trillion, representing an overshoot of 53.62 per cent.
Capital expenditure, meanwhile, was budgeted at ₦13.77 trillion but actual spending reached only ₦11.59 trillion, representing 15.86 per cent under-execution.
The pressure continued into 2025, as against a prorated spending target of ₦41.24 trillion for the first nine months, aggregate expenditure stood at ₦24.67 trillion, representing a 40.19 per cent under-execution.
Capital spending was particularly weak, further revealing that against an annual capital budget of ₦23.44 trillion, only ₦6.60 trillion was spent in the first three quarters of 2025.
The consequences were visible in key sectors; for instance, as of June 30, 2025, the Federal Ministry of Health had utilised only 32.20 per cent of its 2024 annual capital allocation, while Education recorded 23.54 per cent.
Housing and Urban Development utilised just 21.26 per cent.
The humanitarian sector recorded an even wider gap, showing that of the ₦125.54 billion capital budget for Humanitarian Affairs in 2024, only ₦4.35 billion was released and ₦1.66 billion utilised, translating to just 1.32 per cent execution.
Households feel the fiscal disconnect
The weak transmission from government spending to household welfare has occurred alongside severe cost-of-living pressures.
Headline inflation rose from 22.41 per cent in May 2023 to a peak of 34.80 per cent in December 2024 before the rebasing of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Food inflation also climbed above 40 per cent in 2024.
Although headline inflation had eased to 15.43 per cent by July 2026, food inflation remained high at 20.31 per cent.
The naira also weakened sharply, moving from about ₦460/$1 in May 2023 to roughly ₦1,358/$1 after foreign exchange reforms and the floating of the currency.
The official exchange rate reached about ₦1,630 to ₦1,738/$1 in early 2024, while parallel market rates briefly approached ₦1,900/$1.
Energy costs compounded the pressure with petrol rising from ₦238.11 per litre in May 2023 to a national average high of ₦1,596.25 per litre by May 2026 following the removal of the fuel subsidy, currency depreciation and downstream deregulation.
Interest rates also rose sharply, with the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) moving from 18.50 per cent in May 2023 to 27.50 per cent in late 2024 and early 2025 before easing to 26.50 per cent by mid-2026.
The missing safety net
Perhaps the clearest evidence of the budget’s weak impact on vulnerable households is the Special Intervention Programme.
The programme was allocated ₦200 billion annually in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 budgets, but actual releases and spending were zero in 2023, zero in 2024 and zero in the first nine months of 2025.
At the same time, domestic borrowing to finance large fiscal deficits contributed to a 4.78 per cent contraction in private-sector credit in September 2025, weakening the capacity of businesses to drive job creation and economic activity.
A report by BudgIT also identified ₦2.24 trillion in insertions in the 2024 budget and ₦6.9 trillion in the 2025 budget, arguing that such distortions weakened capital implementation.
The result is a widening gap between budget size and economic impact. Roads remain inadequate, power supply unreliable, and healthcare and education investment constrained, even as government expenditure rises.
The central problem, therefore, is not simply that Nigeria is spending too little, but it is that a significant share of the money is being absorbed by debt service and other fiscal pressures, while development and social spending remains poorly executed.
As the Budget Office warned, debt obligations “significantly constrain fiscal space for growth-enhancing and social expenditures.”
For most Nigerians, the outcome has been a difficult paradox: bigger government budgets, but weaker purchasing power and limited improvement in the services and opportunities that matter most to household welfare.
