The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday approved a fresh extension for the capital component of the 2024 national budget, moving the implementation deadline from June 30, 2025, to December 31, 2025.
This second extension in under a year was rushed through all three legislative readings in one sitting after the Senate suspended its rules to fast-track the process.
The extension, according to lawmakers, is necessary to ensure that ongoing capital projects captured under the N28.7 trillion 2024 Appropriation Act are fully implemented without being abandoned due to time constraints.
“We must not allow these important national projects to be abandoned due to time constraints,” said Senator Solomon Adeola, chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations and sponsor of the amendment bill. “Extending the implementation period will ensure value for money and improved service delivery.”
Budget Overlap Sparks Governance Concerns
This development means the 2024 budget will run concurrently with the 2025 budget. Analysts say this overlap creates a double-layered budget implementation, where two separate fiscal blueprints operate simultaneously—a trend that reflects growing dysfunction in Nigeria’s budget management system.
Even more worrying, the 2025 budget is also expected to spill into 2026, given the current trajectory and the precedent now set. This increasingly elastic budget cycle, analysts argue, undermines planning, weakens fiscal accountability, and gives room for lax implementation across MDAs (Ministries, Departments, and Agencies).
The first extension was granted in December 2024, shifting the capital implementation deadline from December 31, 2024, to June 30, 2025. That move followed a formal request from President Bola Tinubu, who cited the need to optimize capital expenditure amid ongoing reforms. But despite the additional six months, many projects remain unexecuted.
The Senate’s new move provides a further six-month extension, making it a full year beyond the original budget calendar.
This now entrenched pattern of rolling over capital budgets year after year, observers say, reveals deeper issues of poor coordination between the executive and legislature, and a growing tendency to mask inefficiency under the guise of pragmatism.
MDAs in the Spotlight
Senate President Godswill Akpabio, while announcing the initial extension during the 2025 budget presentation by the President, had warned MDAs to take their roles in the budget defense and execution process more seriously. He noted that the National Assembly would take “decisive action” against any MDA that delays or fails to appear before committees for budget-related activities.
However, the continued implementation delays point to structural weaknesses, including bureaucratic red tape, corruption, and poor procurement practices.
Analysts believe that Nigeria, essentially running two national budgets simultaneously, yields only predictable results—disorder, duplication, and minimal development impact.
Undermining the Budget Reform Legacy
The January-to-December budget cycle, introduced under the 9th National Assembly and hailed as a milestone for fiscal reform, was designed to instill predictability and discipline into Nigeria’s public finance system. Until then, budget presentations and approvals were sporadic, and often delayed well into the fiscal year.
But with the 2024 budget now extended to December 2025, and the likely spillover of the 2025 budget into mid-2026, that reform legacy is increasingly in doubt.
While lawmakers claim the extension is to ensure projects are completed and public funds are not wasted, there is no clear signal from the federal government or legislature on how they intend to revert to a strict budget calendar. Some fear the extensions could become a permanent feature, enabling political actors to shuffle spending without adequate oversight.
In the meantime, ministries and agencies now have until the end of 2025 to conclude all projects under the 2024 capital allocation. But with fresh budgetary obligations coming in under the 2025 plan, the government faces the risk of overstretching itself financially, especially as revenue generation struggles and debt obligations rise.
Against this backdrop, analysts are advocating drastic reforms to strengthen execution capacity, ensure accountability, and enforce timeline discipline. Lest, Nigeria’s budget process risks descending into a cycle of rollovers with minimal impact, despite the trillions being allocated every year.
