President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s federal government’s fiscal transparency has come under intense scrutiny in the past weeks following an International Monetary Fund report which unravelled N8.8 trillion in unaccounted expenditure.
IMF revelation
The IMF made the revelation in June in its 2026 Article IV Consultation report.
The international lender said the Nigerian government carried out unrecorded expenditure missing from official budget documents.
According to the IMF, the unaccounted-for spending by the Nigerian government in the period under review amounted to N8.8 trillion, 2 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
Tinubu’s govt Budget
The Tinubu government is currently operating three budget circles from 2024 to 2026, amounting to around N154.25 trillion excluding the N2.17 trillion appropriation in 2023 upon it emergence.
Reactions to IMF’s disclosure over N8.8tn unaccounted expenditure
The IMF’s disclosures have drawn weighty criticism from opposition parties.
The presidential candidates of the African Democratic Congress and Nigerian Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, had taken centre stage in the criticism against Tinubu’s government on the whereabouts of N8.8 trillion in unaccounted expenditure.
In defence, the minister of finance, Taiwo Oyedele, dismissed the claim of a ‘missing N8.8 trillion’. According to him, budgeting by the Tinubu’s government is fully accounted for within constitutional boundaries. He said what the IMF observed were discrepancies in the reporting framework.
Implications on the Nigerian economy- Oyedokun
Reacting to the controversy surrounding the IMF’s disclosure of an unaccounted N8.8 trillion, the professor of accounting and finance at Lead City University, Godwin Oyedokun,
