Tinubu Government Faces Fresh Scrutiny As Atiku Alleges N8.8 Trillion Off-Budget Spending

The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has accused the APC-led Tinubu administration of spending about N8.8trillion of public funds outside the budget, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund.

In a Saturday statement personally signed by him, Atiku said the IMF report, published July 1, 2026 by Reuters, revealed that the federal government failed to record public expenditures amounting to about 2 percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product.

“With the current valuation of Nigeria’s economy at about ₦441.5 trillion, this figure comes to a whopping ₦8.8 trillion of public money spent completely outside the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited and hidden from the Nigerian people,” Atiku stated.

The former Vice President described the development as “the most consequential act of fiscal impunity in Nigeria’s recent democratic history” and called on the National Assembly, civil society, the media and other democratic institutions to give it priority.

According to Atiku, quoting the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, the difference comes from “large-scale government projects carried out entirely off-budget.”

“The Tinubu administration is awarding multi-trillion naira contracts, moving massive public capital and commissioning infrastructure projects totally outside the scope of the Auditor-General, the nation’s procurement laws and the legitimate oversight of the National Assembly,” he said.

“It is a parallel fiscal universe, one that is ruled by executive whim, protected from the constitutional accountability that the Nigerian people are owed,” he said.

Atiku pointed to the “Alpha Beta arrangement” in Lagos State when Tinubu was governor as the source of the alleged practice and said that a similar “off-budget economy” is now being copied at the federal level.

“What the IMF has now documented at the federal level is that same Lagos playbook, reproduced at the national level with national consequences,” he said.

“The man who perfected the art of the off-budget economy in Lagos has brought that ‘Beta’ form to Abuja and 220 million Nigerians are paying the price.”

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He also alleged that ₦800 billion was “illegally deducted from the statutory allocations of state governments” without the National Assembly or court order.

He said the funds along with the ₦8.8 trillion indicate “the building of a huge, multi-source political war chest in readiness for the 2027 general elections”.

He said: “When a government is running a secret treasury of this size at a time when it needs to buy election results, the conclusion is not hard to draw.

“The Tinubu government is not reforming Nigeria’s economy. It is using the money of the Nigerian people to finance its own political survival.”

Atiku also mentioned the recent controversy over the insertion of ₦1.3 billion in the 2026 federal budget for the “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council,” an agency which the government later said did not exist.

“It shows that the line between what exists and what is a phantom… has no practical meaning anymore.”

The opposition leader accused the administration of imposing austerity on Nigerians while maintaining a “shadow treasury.”

He said the removal of ₦8.8 trillion from the productive economy partly accounted for policies such as the removal of fuel subsidy, the devaluation of the naira and high interest rates.

“In the 2023 presidential election, I rolled out a comprehensive economic recovery programme anchored on a $10 billion stimulus package to Nigerians… The IMF has now responded to that question. ₦8.8 trillion… was in hand. It wasn’t unobtainable. “It was just being spent in the dark,” Atiku said.