Recent disclosures by the International Monetary Fund regarding massive off-budget expenditures have intensified political headwinds for President Bola Tinubu, prompting Peter Obi to renew demands for the president’s immediate resignation.
The controversy centers on macroeconomic revelations by Christian Ebeke, the IMF’s resident representative in Nigeria, who disclosed on Wednesday that the federal government engaged in extrabudgetary spending equivalent to 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. According to the IMF, this glaring discrepancy indicates that Nigeria’s true fiscal deficit and corresponding borrowing requirements significantly outstrip official government figures.
Seizing on these fiscal red flags, Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), issued a statement on Sunday framing the IMF’s findings as undeniable evidence of systemic plunder. He highlighted that the estimated N8.83 trillion in unrecorded expenditure for 2025 bypassed legislative oversight and administrative scrutiny entirely, describing the fiscal management as a severe breach of public trust.
To contextualize the scale of the financial bypass, Obi pointed out that the N8.83 trillion represents over 35 percent of Nigeria’s N23.96 trillion capital budget for 2025, eclipsing the total actual funds disbursed for capital projects during the fiscal year. Furthermore, the opaque expenditure overshadows the combined statutory allocations for critical human capital development, specifically education at N3.52 trillion and healthcare at N2.38 trillion.
