By Moshood Oshunfurewa
If we are to reincarnate the late Chief Gani Oyesola Fawehinmi (1938–2009), a legendary Nigerian human rights lawyer, publisher, author, social critic, and Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM), on the current budget imbroglio, 2% of GDP, and Gbaja/Adeyemi scandal, I might not mistake his line of words as thus: “Let us call this what it is. Not ‘fiscal opacity.’ Not ‘off-budget spending.’ Not the polite, bloodless language of the International Monetary Fund. What is happening in Nigeria under Bola Ahmed Tinubu is theft — organized, institutionalized, defended-in-law theft of the commonwealth, executed by a ruling class that has learned to dress looting in the language of governance.”
I have watched this country’s rulers, one administration after another, treat the national treasury as a family inheritance to be shared among friends, contractors, and cronies while telling the ordinary Nigerian to “manage.” Tinubu’s government is no exception. It may, in fact, be the fullest flowering of a rot that decades of civilian rule have allowed to fester.
Two percent of GDP: a number that should provoke riots
When the IMF’s man in Abuja, Christian Ebeke, casually mentioned in July 2026 that something like 2% of Nigeria’s entire GDP in public spending simply does not appear in official budget documents, the country’s political class received it as a technical footnote. It should have been received as a declaration of war on the Nigerian people. Two percent of GDP is not small change — it is hospitals unbuilt, teachers unpaid, roads that kill commuters, and children who will never see a classroom. It is the difference between a nation that can feed its people and one that cannot.
