Abuja — Nigeria's federal government is facing mounting public anger over its 2026 national budget, with critics accusing the Bola Tinubu administration of prioritising official luxury and administrative expenditure while starving critical public services of adequate funding — even as new tax burdens are imposed on ordinary citizens.
The ₦49.7 trillion 2026 Appropriations Act, signed into law in January, allocates ₦13.08 trillion to debt servicing — more than the combined allocations for health (₦2.48 trillion) and education (₦3.52 trillion). Critics note that the education figure falls far short of the UNESCO-recommended 15-20% of national budget, with Nigeria's allocation sitting at roughly 7%. A video summarising these contrasts circulated widely on Nigerian social media and was shared on the Nigeria subreddit, attracting a score of 57 and 15 comments, with commenters describing what they called a "government of self-service."
Luxury Line Items Under the Microscope
Among the line items drawing particular scrutiny are allocations for presidential and ministerial offices, official hospitality, and government vehicle procurement. The State House alone is budgeted at over ₦13.7 billion for 2026, while allocations for the rehabilitation of primary health care centres and the deployment of rural teachers remain modest fractions of those figures. Per capita public health spending under the 2026 budget works out to approximately ₦9,800 per Nigerian annually — less than seven US dollars at current exchange rates — against a backdrop of crumbling referral hospitals and mass emigration of medical professionals.
"This budget does not reflect the aspirations of ordinary Nigerians," said a spokesperson for the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), the civil society fiscal watchdog that has previously obtained court orders compelling government transparency over budget implementation. "When you allocate thirteen times more to debt than to health, and then add luxury expenditure for the presidential villa, you are telling the Nigerian people that their survival is not a priority." SERAP has indicated it is reviewing the 2026 appropriations for potential legal challenge.
The BudgIT foundation, which conducts annual budget tracking, noted in its preliminary 2026 review that capital expenditure ratios remain skewed toward the federal capital and administrative infrastructure rather than frontline service delivery. Recurrent expenditure — salaries, overheads, and official comforts — continues to consume a disproportionate share of the federal budget even as the government projects ambitious growth targets.
Tax Burdens on Shrinking Incomes
The juxtaposition is made sharper by the government's concurrent push for new and higher taxes. Under Tinubu's economic reform agenda, Nigerians have already absorbed the removal of fuel subsidies — which sent pump prices surging past ₦1,000 per litre — alongside a naira devaluation that has roughly halved household purchasing power in dollar terms since 2023. The prospect of additional tax obligations layered onto this economic pressure has fuelled deep public resentment. "And yet they impose more taxes," read one comment that captured the community mood with blunt precision.
Federal Structure Compounds the Challenge
Nigeria's federal system distributes budget responsibilities across the federal government, 36 state governments, and 774 local government areas — a structure that can obscure accountability. Federal statutory allocations to states through the Federation Account are subject to their own political pressures at the sub-national level, meaning that even where central government budgets include nominally pro-poor line items on paper, delivery at the point of service is frequently poor. The National Assembly — both the Senate and House of Representatives — retains constitutional authority to amend and approve the budget, though critics note that the legislature's own overhead allocations are among the more generously maintained in the document.
'Japa' and the Cost of Neglect
The chronic underfunding of health and education has a human cost that extends beyond Nigeria's borders: over 18 million Nigerian children remain out of school according to UNICEF estimates, while the 'Japa' brain drain has seen thousands of doctors, nurses, engineers, and teachers emigrate annually in search of the stable salaries and functioning systems their own country cannot provide. That drain, in turn, deepens the very service failures that the budget fails to address.
In Nigeria, as across Africa's giants, challenges are real but entrepreneurial energy and cultural creativity drive progress. Yet for that progress to be sustained and broadly shared, fiscal priorities must align with the needs of the 200 million people this government serves — not the comfort of the few who govern them. SERAP and BudgIT have both signalled they will maintain close scrutiny of 2026 budget implementation throughout the fiscal year.
