President Bola Tinubu has asked the House of Representatives to repeal and re-enact the 2024 and 2025 budgets and extend the 2025 budget implementation cycle to 31 March 2026.
The request was contained in a letter from the President read by Speaker Rt. Hon. Abbas Tajudeen on Friday. This comes ahead of Tinubu’s presentation of the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly.
In the letter, the President explained that the bills seek to repeal the 2024 Appropriation Act of N35.06 trillion and re-enact it with a revised total expenditure of N43.56 trillion. The revised 2024 budget authorises N1.74 trillion for statutory transfers, N8.27 trillion for debt service, N11.27 trillion for recurrent spending, and N22.28 trillion for capital projects up to 31 December 2025.
For 2025, Tinubu proposed reducing the budget from N54.99 trillion to N48.32 trillion while extending it to 31 March 2026. The President said the move is part of a broader fiscal reform measure aimed at eliminating overlapping budgets and strengthening planning, execution, and accountability across government expenditure cycles.
Tinubu said the proposed bills would accommodate expenditure items not previously recognised and introduce a revised capital implementation target of 30 percent. Extending the 2025 budget would ensure full release of the 30 percent capital allocation to Ministries, Departments, and Agencies, improving project execution and budget performance. He described the move as part of fiscal reforms to end overlapping budgets that weaken planning, execution, and accountability.
In June, the Senate approved a second extension of the implementation period for the 2024 capital component of the national budget from June 30, 2025 to December 31, 2025. The January-to-December budget implementation cycle was established during the tenure of the 9th National Assembly. On December 18, 2024, the National Assembly approved extending the 2024 budget’s lifespan to June 2025. Last week, the federal government directed Ministries, Departments, and Agencies to carry over 70 percent of their approved 2025 capital allocations to 2026. A circular issued by the Budget Ministry instructed that 2026 budget proposals must largely be composed of funds already allocated in 2025 and that new capital projects are not permitted.
