President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Friday, 19 December, 2025, presented a landmark ₦58.47 trillion 2026 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly.
Christened the ‘Budget of Consolidation, Renewed Resilience, and Shared Prosperity’, the proposal marks a 6% increase over the 2025 estimates and seeks to stabilize Nigeria’s economy through aggressive fiscal reforms.
The budget allocates ₦25.68 trillion to capital expenditure, representing roughly 44% of the total, with a primary focus on completing ongoing national projects. This is balanced against ₦15.26 trillion for recurrent non-debt expenditure and ₦15.52 trillion dedicated to debt servicing, which highlights the ongoing cost of managing Nigeria’s debt profile.
Furthermore, personnel costs, including pensions and government-owned enterprise expenses, are projected at ₦10.75 trillion.
The 2026 budget is built on a revised Medium-Term Expenditure Framework that sets the exchange rate benchmark at ₦1,400 per US Dollar, a decrease from the previous ₦1,512. To finance the total expenditure, the government expects ₦34.33 trillion in retained revenue, with non-oil sectors now contributing nearly two-thirds of all receipts. The funding gap will be covered by ₦17.88 trillion in new domestic and foreign borrowing.
A central theme of the President’s presentation was the shift toward ward-based development, which aims to drive economic growth from the bottom up across all 8,809 political wards in the country. Key priorities include rebuilding security to restore productivity on farmlands and in urban centers, as well as sustaining the “Renewed Hope Infrastructure Fund” to modernize transport and power networks.
Additionally, the President is enforcing fiscal discipline by aligning the budget strictly with the calendar year to prevent overlapping fiscal cycles.
With the Bill now before the legislature, the National Assembly will begin departmental budget defense sessions.
President Tinubu has called for an expedited review process to ensure the budget is passed in time for implementation to officially begin on January 1, 2026.
