“In any serious public finance system, such an overlap would represent a breakdown of basic budget discipline. In Nigeria under Tinubu, it is increasingly presented as normal governance.”
The 2026 Appropriation Bill, signed by President Bola Tinubu, is not a demonstration of fiscal foresight but a striking example of institutional disarray elevated to the status of economic policy. It is difficult to treat this budget as a coherent governing instrument when the 2025 Budget cycle has not only overstayed its fiscal lifespan but has been formally extended into mid-2026.
In any serious public finance system, such an overlap would represent a breakdown of basic budget discipline. In Nigeria under Tinubu, it is increasingly presented as normal governance.
At the heart of the problem is a fundamental contradiction, the government has introduced a ₦68.32 trillion 2026 Budget, while admitting that the 2025 Budget remains incomplete. This means Nigeria is effectively operating without a clear fiscal boundary.
A budget cycle that does not end cannot logically give rise to a new one. What now exists is a blurred fiscal structure in which two budget years run concurrently, with no clear closure, no proper accounting separation, and no verifiable execution record for either. This alone weakens the credibility of the 2026 Budget as a serious economic instrument.
A budget is not merely a political statement of intent; it is a time-bound financial contract. Once its timeline collapses, its integrity collapses with it.
Under Tinubu, fiscal timelines have become elastic, not for economic efficiency, but as a consequence of administrative failure. The repeated extension of the 2025 capital budget is not evidence of flexibility; it is evidence of incapacity.
More troubling is that the extension of the 2025 Budget into 2026 effectively undermines the integrity of the new appropriation. It creates a system in which new allocations are introduced while old allocations remain unspent, partially executed, or unaccounted for.
This is not fiscal planning; it is fiscal congestion. No economy that seeks stability can operate indefinitely with overlapping budgets without eroding transparency and weakening accountability.
The administration has attempted to justify this arrangement as necessary for the “full utilisation of capital releases.” However, this argument does not withstand scrutiny. It merely exposes the state’s inability to implement projects within defined fiscal periods.
Ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) remain structurally unable to absorb capital allocations within a single budget cycle. Yet, rather than address this weakness, the government has normalised it through repeated extensions and rollovers.
The result is a budgeting system that has lost its defining principle: annual discipline. Nigeria now operates a quasi-permanent fiscal continuum in which budgets begin but do not end, implementation drifts across multiple years and accountability is weakened by the absence of closure. In such a system, performance measurement becomes unreliable because fiscal benchmarks are constantly shifting.
Against this backdrop, the 2026 Budget loses coherence. It is introduced into a system that has not cleared previous obligations, not resolved earlier execution failures, and not established a clean baseline for new fiscal planning.
The central question therefore remains unavoidable, what exactly is the 2026 Budget responding to, when the 2025 Budget has not been concluded?
This is not a technical inconvenience. It is a structural failure of fiscal governance. It reflects an administration that prioritises announcement over completion, projection over execution and headline figures over institutional discipline. A government that cannot close a budget cycle lacks the credibility to open another.
The broader consequence is that Nigeria’s budgeting system, under Tinubu, is drifting away from orthodox public finance principles. The principle of annuality –the foundation of modern budgeting –has been effectively weakened. Transparency suffers because expenditures are dispersed across overlapping cycles. Accountability suffers because performance cannot be tied to a single fiscal year. Credibility suffers because citizens and investors can no longer clearly distinguish between what is planned, what is delayed and what is actually delivered.
In economic terms, this is not reform. It is regression disguised as activity. The 2026 Appropriation Bill therefore rests on a weak foundation. It enters a fiscal environment already burdened by delays, extensions and unresolved implementation gaps.
Without a definitive closure of the 2025 cycle, the 2026 Budget lacks definitional clarity. It is not a fresh fiscal beginning, but an administrative continuation of unresolved outcomes.
Ultimately, the most troubling issue is not the size of the budget or its rhetorical ambition, but the erosion of basic fiscal order. A government that cannot maintain clear separation between budget cycles is operating within a system of permanent adjustment, rather than structured development.
On this basis, the 2026 Budget, as currently framed, cannot be regarded as a credible economic instrument. It is, at best, a continuation of unfinished fiscal processes; at worst, a symbolic exercise detached from the discipline required for effective economic management.
