By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu of using the 2026 federal budget to bury trillions of naira in unaccountable spending, pointing to a dramatic surge in the Service-Wide Vote SWV that he says the government must now explain.
The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC said the SWV, a discretionary budget line, jumped from N638 billion in 2025 to N12.8 trillion this year, a nearly 1,918 per cent rise that he called one of the starkest examples of fiscal opacity in the country’s democratic era.
The figure is tied to just 10 ministries, departments and agencies’ MDAs, which together account for 84 per cent of the entire budget, according to a statement signed by his spokesman, Phrank Shaibu, on Monday.
Atiku zeroed in on the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, where he said N2.19 trillion of the SWV is listed as personnel costs, dwarfing the N54.8 billion allocated for salaries at the Federal Ministry of Finance. “Who exactly are the workers earning ₦2.19 trillion? Where are they? What offices do they occupy? What agencies do they belong to?” he asked, describing the figures as budgetary absurdity rather than legitimate planning.
