The failed 2024/2025 capital budgets

IN February this year, the then Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite, confirmed what government officials had largely sidestepped when she told senators that, truly, the Federal Government had been unable to fund its capital projects since 2024. The minister, who was at a hearing of the Senate, said that the government was now ready, mid-February 2026, to fund 30 percent of the budget, while the remainder of the 2025 capital votes would be carried over. According to her, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had been directed to upload their cash plans to facilitate disbursement, which would enable them to fund 30 percent of the 2024 projects as if they were 2025 projects. She said: “The financial management system is back online. We are ready to start, but MDAs must complete their documentation requirements.” The shocking reality of the minister’s disclosure is that the government had largely been funding government running costs, which are of benefit only to appointees and civil servants, all along. Funding for capital projects that affected the common people had practically dried up. That should come as a strange find, especially in an era when the earnings of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) had quadrupled to the extent that the committee, which shared about N500 billion in 2022/2023, now shares close to N2 trillion among the three tiers of government monthly.

The 2024 budget, which had the sum of N28.7 trillion as initial approval with a capital component of about N13.19 trillion, saw such a poor execution that it was extended twice—first to June 2025 and then to December 2025—to avoid what the government described as abandonment of projects. By June 2025, only 32.28 percent of the 2024 capital budget (N3.28 trillion) had been disbursed, with the N723 billion remaining unspent across MDAs. Similarly, the 2025 budget totalling N54.99 trillion with a capital vote of N23.96 trillion experienced widespread non-releases, a situation that informed the government’s decision to roll over 70 percent of the votes to 2026. In short, the government effectively ran multiple overlapping budgets, a development that raises questions of accountability and issues of fiscal mismanagement. A Tracka report by BudgIT revealed that of the 2,760 tracked federal capital projects in 2024/2025 across 30 states, 662 were abandoned or unexecuted, despite N30 billion in allocations. These include some 99 abandoned projects, with N8 billion disbursed and 471 unexecuted projects with N7.6 billion disbursed. The organisation reported that an additional 92 projects worth N15.07 billion were either fraudulently delivered or characterised by fund diversion, relocation, or substandard execution.

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The vexing question is why the Federal Government is unable to fund capital projects despite the reported boom in its finances. In answering the question, economic experts agree that unrealistic revenue projections remain the key albatross of the administration. Another source of uneven spending between capital and recurrent expenditure is excessive reliance on oil revenues. The combined effects of these factors, added to the huge spending on debt servicing, cannot but create funding turmoil. While the nation’s oil production averaged 1.6 million barrels per day in 2024, which was below the projected production of 1.75 million barrels per day, oil prices hovered around $64 per barrel against the budget benchmark of $75. Added to that stark difference between assumption and reality is the fact that oil production performed at 18 percent in the year.

The situation has not been helped by the high debt servicing costs. A document recently released by the office of the Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy on Media and Communications, Dr. Ogho Okiti, confirmed that Nigeria’s debt servicing costs exceeded capital expenditure by N3.9trn between 2024 and 2025. It showed that the Federal Government spent N27.2trn on servicing public debt during the two years. The document indicated that the government spent N12.63trn on debt servicing in 2024, significantly above the N8.56tn budgeted for the year. In 2025, the figure rose further to N14.57trn, exceeding the N13.12trn initially provided for in the budget. Overall, debt servicing exceeded budget projections by about N5.52trn between the two years, rising by as much as 15.4 percent between 2024 and 2025. Even though government revenue increased from N12.48trn in 2023 to N20.98tn in 2024, debt service payments reached N12.63trn in 2024, gulping about 60 percent of government revenue. In this situation, the spending on capital projects can only be scanty. This scary scenario was also true of 2025 when government revenue stood at N22 trillion, as of November that year, but debt servicing had equally risen to N14.57 trillion, which meant that nearly two-thirds of revenue went into servicing debt that year.

Sadly, Nigerians are already bearing the brunt of these economic machinations as social and infrastructural development have stalled. For instance, the Ministry of Health reportedly got only N36 million out of N218 billion in 2025 (0.0165%); the Ministry of Transportation received N2.57 billion out of N256.73 billion (about 1 percent), and the Ministry of Interior got zero releases for both 2024 and 2025 budgets. Other examples include the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, which got N394.8 million out of N89.8 billion, and the Ministry of Housing, which got zero allocation, though it had N23 billion released late for procurement. The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy got N202 million out of N3.53 billion, (1.7 percent); the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy got N28 million out of N13 billion budgeted for 2024, while there were zero releases for the ministries of Education, Power, Solid Minerals Development, Agriculture, Defence, and other security agencies in 2024/2025 budgets.

This development looks stranger than fiction, especially where critical sectors like security and power are concerned. It is obvious that to address such economic mishaps which have grave implications for social welfare and development, the government must ensure budget projections anchored on realisable revenues, especially in the non-oil sector, in view of the volatilities associated with oil revenue. It is also important that the government takes measures to reduce the cost of governance by trimming MDAs in line with the much-talked-about Oronsaye Report. The National Assembly must also resume its oversight functions in a more professional way. We emphasise that the lawmakers must activate the tenets of Section 62(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which mandates both chambers to set up a Joint Finance Committee of equal number to take charge of economic projections, budgeting and finance of the federation, not the garbage in, garbage out processes that Nigerians have been treated to under the so-called ‘feeding bottle federalism’ and envelop system of budget administration.

Nigerians deserve all the good things of life, but it is only through a deliberate and accountable budgetary system that the government’s lofty economic and social goals can be attained.