President Bola Tinubu has formally requested the National Assembly to approve an upward revision of ₦9.3 trillion to Nigeria’s 2026 budget, a move that, if approved, would raise total federal spending from ₦58.47 trillion to ₦67.7 trillion, making it the largest proposed federal budget in Nigerian history.
The request was conveyed in a letter read by Senate President Godswill Akpabio on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, as lawmakers returned from the two-week Eid-el-Fitr recess. Akpabio subsequently referred the proposal to the Senate Committee on Appropriations for detailed legislative consideration.
Why Tinubu says the increase is needed
The president cited three reasons for the proposed increase in his letter to the Senate.
First, he said the adjustment is designed to regularise and account for outstanding legal commitments carried over from previous appropriation cycles, preventing them from burdening the execution of the 2026 budget going forward.
Second, the increase is intended to fund outstanding legacy capital projects inherited from previous budgets — with a specific focus on ensuring their completion rather than allowing them to continue rolling over indefinitely from one fiscal year to the next.
Third, the president said the additional spending would support key transport infrastructure projects aligned with the administration’s development agenda, while also preserving macro-fiscal stability and easing pressure on the domestic financial market.
The 2026 budget’s original framework
Tinubu presented the original 2026 budget of ₦58.18 trillion to the National Assembly on December 19, 2025, themed “Budget of Consolidation, Renewed Resilience and Shared Prosperity.” The budget projected total revenue of ₦34.33 trillion, capital expenditure of ₦26.08 trillion, and recurrent non-debt expenditure of ₦15.25 trillion. It carried a deficit of ₦23.85 trillion, representing 4.28 per cent of GDP. Key projections included a crude oil benchmark price of $64.85 per barrel, oil production of 1.84 million barrels per day, and an exchange rate of ₦1,400 to the dollar.
Notably, the 2026 budget had not yet been passed by the National Assembly as of Tuesday’s request, meaning Tinubu is seeking a significant amendment to a budget that is still awaiting legislative approval.
Legacy capital rollover problem
Tuesday’s request is directly connected to a broader fiscal reset Tinubu has been attempting since taking office. In December 2025, the House of Representatives approved Tinubu’s request to extend the 2025 budget implementation to March 31, 2026, after the administration disclosed that approximately ₦16.76 trillion initially earmarked for capital projects could not be funded within the original 2025 timeline and was rolled over to the 2026 fiscal year.
Tinubu has repeatedly stated his determination to end Nigeria’s long-standing practice of overlapping budgets, vowing that from April 2026, Nigeria will operate on a single budget backed by a single revenue cycle, with no rollovers, no overlaps, and no excuses. Tuesday’s request to increase the 2026 budget by ₦9.3 trillion is framed as the mechanism to clear the inherited backlog before that clean slate begins.
What it means for Nigerians
The proposed ₦67.7 trillion budget, if approved, would mean Nigeria’s federal government would spend more than double what it did just three years ago, when the 2023 budget stood at approximately ₦21.8 trillion. The increase reflects the sharp devaluation of the naira since the subsidy removal in 2023, which has inflated the naira cost of virtually all government programmes denominated in dollars, including debt service, infrastructure contracts, and security spending.
The development is expected to generate debate among lawmakers and economic stakeholders, particularly regarding funding sources, implementation capacity, and the broader implications for Nigeria’s fiscal outlook. Critics are likely to question how a government that has already warned of a ₦23.85 trillion deficit in the original budget plans to fund an additional ₦9.3 trillion in spending.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations is expected to schedule public hearings on the request before reporting back to the full Senate for a vote.