The Federal Government has dismissed claims that it spent more than ₦8 trillion outside the 2026 budget, describing the reports as inaccurate and a misrepresentation of the International Monetary Fund’s 2026 Article IV Consultation Report.
The government said the allegations, which referenced comments attributed to the IMF Representative in Nigeria and the Fund’s report, wrongly suggested that about two per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product was expended outside the approved budget.
This was contained in a statement issued on Sunday by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele.
The rebuttal comes after IMF disclosed that Nigeria left public spending equivalent to about 2% of GDP unreported in recent official budgets, obscuring the country’s true financing needs and making the fiscal deficit appear smaller than it actually was.
Speaking in Lagos, IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, said, “So far we think that there are about two per cent of GDP of expenditure that were not reported that should be reported and should be recorded, so that this statistical discrepancy will disappear.”
