*Says amount equivalent to 2% of Nigeria’s GDP
Chuks Okocha in Abuja
The former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has raised the alarm over an alleged unrecorded N8.8trillion public expenditures, and called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to probe the allegation that the federal government omitted public spending worth two per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Production (GDP) from recent budgets.
Atiku claimed the amount was in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report published on July 1, 2026.
According to the former vice president, the IMF report revealed that President Bola Tinubu-led administration failed to record public expenditures amounting to approximately two per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in recent official budgets.
Atiku, who said he viewed this revelation with the gravest alarm, called upon all Nigerians – the media, civil society, the National Assembly, and every democratic institution in the country – to set aside every distraction and direct their full attention to what he described as the most consequential act of fiscal impunity in Nigeria’s recent democratic history.
“At the current valuation of Nigeria’s economy at approximately N441.5 trillion, this figure translates to a staggering N8.8 trillion in public funds spent entirely outside the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited, and hidden from the Nigerian people,” Atiku said in a statement issued yesterday.
Atiku noted that the claim was contained in the IMF’s latest Article IV consultation, articulated by its resident representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke.
He alleged that this staggering discrepancy arose from large-scale government projects executed off-budget entirely.
”Let us be absolutely clear about what this means: The Tinubu administration is awarding multi-trillion naira contracts, moving massive public capital, and commissioning infrastructure projects entirely beyond the reach of the Auditor-General, the nation’s procurement laws, and the legitimate oversight of the National Assembly.
”It is a parallel fiscal universe, one governed by executive whim, shielded from the constitutional accountability that the Nigerian people are owed.”, the former vice president said.
Among other submissions, Atiku recommended that “the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, and every relevant law enforcement and anti-corruption agency must open formal investigations into both the unrecorded expenditures and the unlawful deductions from state allocations, independent of any political direction from the Presidency.”
He explained that ”This conduct follows a pattern that is unmistakably familiar to anyone who has studied the fiscal governance of Lagos State under Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Governor. For years, Tinubu operated what has become widely known as the Alpha Beta arrangement, a revenue management structure under which between 10 and 30 percent of Lagos State’s internally generated revenue disappeared into private pockets before it was ever captured in the official budget. Revenues were siphoned at the point of collection, before they could be subjected to legislative appropriation, public scrutiny, or statutory accountability.
”The money vanished upstream, and what arrived in the treasury was already a fraction of what Lagosians had paid.
”What the IMF has now documented at the federal level is that same Lagos playbook, replicated at national scale and with national consequences. The man who perfected the art of the off-budget economy in Lagos has brought that “Beta” form to Abuja, and 220 million Nigerians are paying the price.”
According to Atiku, ”This shadow economy does not operate only through unrecorded expenditures. It also operates through illegal extractions. We draw the attention of Nigerians to the N800 billion that has been illegally deducted from the statutory allocations of state governments, funds belonging to the federating units of this republic, unlawfully withheld and diverted without the authorisation of the National Assembly, without a court order, and without any constitutional basis whatsoever”.
Atiku said that state governments across Nigeria under the aegis of the Progressives Governors Forum have had their allocations raided to fund projects and purposes that have never been disclosed to the Nigerian public.
Atiku said, ”We state clearly and without equivocation that this N800 billion, combined with the N8.8 trillion in unrecorded federal expenditures, points unmistakably to the construction of a massive, multi-source political war chest being assembled ahead of the 2027 general election.”
