Civil Society Organisations alongside the Nigeria Labour Congress have raised concern over the persistent constitutional and statutory breaches in the management of Nigeria's revenues, expenditure by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration.
The CSOs including ActionAid Nigeria Center for Social Justice ( CSJ) Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC) , Impact Bridge Africa, Plan International further expressed concern about the opacity, lack of transparency, disregard of timeliness, poor citizens participation in the federal budgeting proces and debt management.
The CSOs during a joint press briefing yesterday in Abuja decried the late presentation of the 2026-2028 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) despite the Section 14 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act stipulating that the MTEF should have been presented to NASS in early July 2025, thereby ensuring it is approved before NASS proceeded on their mid-year recess.
They said, "Contrary to Section 48 of the FRA, at the time of presenting the 2026 Executive Budget, there was no approved MTEF available to Nigerians, and the 2026 budget had not been passed as of April. This, they said, constitutes a gross violation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which stipulates that the financial year runs from January 1 to December 31 each year."
The CSOs also frowned at the increase in the executive budget proposal from N58.4trillion to N68.3trillion, representing an increase of about N9trillion, saying the critical challenge is that the N58.4trillion proposal had a deficit of N25.2trillion, worrying about where the new funding would come from.
They further decried the poor release of allocation in the 2025 budget and raised concern over a situation where the Federal Ministry of health received budget release of 36million out of the 218billion for capital budget.
Speaking on excessive borrowing, the Executive Director of CISLAC Auwal Rafsanjani regretted the situation where Nigeria's debt Portfolio increased from N87.4 trillion between 2023 to N153.29 trillion as at December 31, 2025 saying the President has reportedly forwarded another loan request of about $6billion.
He wondered what the loans are being used for saying the government has withdrawn subsidy from basic infrastructures including health, fuel, electricity, transportation, education, agriculture among others and other infrastructures.
Rafsanjani said "So why are we taking this huge amount of loans? We have taken over 60 trillion under the current administration. And there's no any data showing that despite the saving we have made from the subsidy removal, there are no verifiable physical tangible data to show Nigerians' lives have been improved despite the huge saving from the subsidy."
He called on the National Assembly and the President to recognise that their mandate is not to punish Nigerians, weaken the economy, or subject citizens to prolonged poverty and instability, but to prioritise progressive policies and programmes aimed at lifting Nigerians out of poverty, tackling underdevelopment, and addressing the country's deteriorating infrastructure.
The Senior Assistant Secretary General of the Nigeria Labour Congress Mr Eustace James in his remarks stated that it is obvious that kleptocrats have taken over the leadership of Nigerian government and the people are being enslaved, saying the policies alleged to be for the development of the country are enslaving Nigerians and the alleged savings or gains from these policies are being stolen by Nsiu and Nigerians are suffering for it.
ActionAid Country Director Andrew Mamedu wondered if the government was listening to the outcries of Nigerians saying for years there have been issues they have being raising but the government still go ahead with whatever they want to do.
He highlighted some of the issues to include budget deficit saying every year the National Assembly members keep injecting constituency projects into the budget
He said "I know of a ministry that submitted a budget proposal of about N240billion however when the budget returned to them it was about N1trullion. All these are happening and it is Nigerians that are suffering the consequences".