Atiku alleges N8.8tn in off-budget spending, demands probe of Tinubu govt

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.

“This means that in view of the current valuation of Nigeria’s economy of around ₦441.5 trillion, this amounts to a staggering ₦8.8 trillion of public money that has been spent entirely outside of the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited and hidden from the Nigerian people,” Atiku said.

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.

Atiku quoted the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, who attributed the difference to “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 traced the alleged practice to the “Alpha Beta arrangement” in Lagos State when Tinubu was governor and said a similar “off-budget economy” is now being copied at the federal level.

“What the IMF now documented at the federal level, 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, together with the ₦8.8 trillion, showed “the construction of a huge, multi-source political war chest in readiness for the 2027 general elections”.

“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,” he said.

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

Atiku also referred to 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 claimed did not exist.

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

The opposition leader slammed the administration for putting Nigerians on austerity and running a “shadow treasury.”

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

“In the 2023 presidential election, I launched a comprehensive economic recovery programme based on a $10 billion stimulus package to Nigerians… The IMF has now responded to that question. ₦8.8 trillion… was there. It was not unattainable. “It was just being spent in the dark,” Atiku said.