The Budget Office Now Reports Nigeria's 2025 Amended Budget as N48.32 Trillion, N6.67 Trillion Below the Figure It Reported Three Months Earlier
Two consecutive quarterly Budget Implementation Reports from the same federal office give different totals for the same enacted 2025 budget, and different actuals for the same two quarters. The later report also contains a financing table whose columns do not add to their own sub-total, by N296.43 billion.
The Budget Office of the Federation publishes quarterly Budget Implementation Reports under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007. We downloaded the 2025 First Quarter, Second Quarter and Third Quarter reports from the Budget Office website on 23 September 2026 and read the fiscal account table, Table 3.9, in each.
The Second Quarter 2025 report states in its text that a total of N54.99 trillion was appropriated for expenditure in the 2025 Amended Budget, and its Table 3.9 budget column totals N54,990.17 billion. The Third Quarter 2025 report states that a total of N48.32 trillion was appropriated for the same budget, and its Table 3.9 budget column totals N48,316.24 billion. The difference is N6,673.93 billion. We re-added both columns from their own parts. In the second quarter report, recurrent non-debt N13,588.01 billion plus debt N14,317.14 billion plus capital N23,439.25 billion plus statutory transfers N3,645.76 billion gives N54,990.16 billion. In the third quarter report the same recurrent, debt and statutory transfer figures appear unchanged, but total capital falls to N16,765.33 billion, and the four add to N48,316.24 billion exactly.
The entire reduction sits in one line. The second quarter report carries a single line, Capital Expenditure (MDAs and Others), budgeted at N18,532.16 billion. The third quarter report splits that into Capital Expenditure (MDAs) at N5,717.40 billion and Capital Supplementation and Others at N6,140.84 billion, which sum to N11,858.24 billion. The gap between the old line and the two new lines is N6,673.92 billion. Every other budget line we checked, including project-tied loans at N3,364.28 billion, grants at N721.91 billion and the government-owned enterprise lines, is identical in both documents. The President signed the 2025 Appropriation Act at N54.99 trillion on 28 February 2025. Neither report explains the change.
The actuals for quarters already reported were also rewritten. The First Quarter report says the sum of N34.32 billion was released to MDAs and cash-backed for their 2025 capital projects and programmes. The Second Quarter report says the same sentence with N393.86 billion. The Third Quarter report's table puts MDA capital at N1.63 billion for the first quarter and zero for the second, a nine-month total of N17.71 billion. Against the earlier reports, N426.55 billion of first-half MDA capital spending is no longer there.
Project-tied loans move the other way. The Second Quarter report records no project-tied loan capital expenditure for either quarter while recording N70.11 billion and N1,605.68 billion of project-tied loan drawdowns as financing inflows over the same two quarters. The Third Quarter report records project-tied loan expenditure of N758.98 billion in the first quarter and N1,309.24 billion in the second. We tested whether the two restatements account for the change in total. First-half aggregate expenditure rises from N16,632.58 billion to N18,274.24 billion, a difference of N1,641.66 billion, and adding N2,068.22 billion of project-tied loan spending while removing N426.55 billion of MDA capital spending gives N1,641.67 billion. First-half revenue is unchanged at N4,954.33 billion and N5,974.99 billion in both documents. The restatement is entirely on the expenditure side, and it moves the reported first-half deficit from N5,703.26 billion to N7,344.92 billion.
One table in the later report does not balance against itself. In the Third Quarter report's financing section, the second-quarter column lists privatisation proceeds of N7.76 billion, project-tied loans of N1,309.24 billion, foreign borrowing of zero and domestic borrowing of N2,805.00 billion. Those add to N4,122.00 billion. The printed sub-total is N4,418.43 billion. The gap is N296.43 billion, and it is the same size as the downward revision of the second-quarter project-tied loan figure, N1,605.68 billion less N1,309.24 billion, which is N296.44 billion. N4,418.43 billion is the sub-total the Second Quarter report printed. The nine-month financing total of N12,343.42 billion carries the same gap: its own nine-month components add to N12,046.99 billion. The first-quarter and third-quarter columns add exactly.
The Third Quarter 2025 report is listed on the Budget Office site under the title Reviewed 2025 Third Quarter Macroeconomics and Financial Analysis. The file itself is titled 2025 Third Quarter Budget Implementation Report on its cover and in its foreword. Its embedded creation date is 21 August 2026. The First and Second Quarter 2025 files both carry an embedded creation date of 22 December 2025.
What this rests on
Table 3.9 in each of the three reports, plus the narrative sections on aggregate expenditure and on MDA capital vote utilisation in the second and third quarter reports. The N54.99 trillion enactment figure is corroborated by the first and second quarter reports' own prose and by contemporaneous reporting of the 28 February 2025 signing. Every total quoted here was re-added from the itemised lines printed in the same table.
What this does not establish
This does not establish that money is missing, misapplied or stolen, and no court has found anything of the kind. A reclassification between Capital Expenditure (MDAs and Others) and Capital Supplementation and Others, and a reclassification of project-tied loan drawdowns from financing-only to expenditure, could each have an accounting explanation; neither report gives one. We hold no release warrants, no Accountant-General cash-backing records and no drawdown schedules, so we cannot say which of the two sets of first-half actuals is correct. We did not reach the Budget Office for comment. The N296.43 billion sub-total gap is an arithmetic failure on the page, and nothing more is claimed for it.
What we did ourselves
We retrieved three quarterly reports from the Budget Office site, re-added both budget columns from their own line items, re-added total capital in both, re-added the third quarter report's capital actuals column by column, and isolated the N296.43 billion sub-total failure to the second-quarter financing column alone. We then reconciled the N1,641.66 billion first-half expenditure restatement to its two component revisions, confirmed first-half revenue is unchanged across both documents, and read the PDF metadata for the embedded creation dates.
Sources for this report
(A) 2025 Third Quarter Budget Implementation Report, Budget Office of the Federation, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, PDF creation date 21 August 2026 (SHA-256 582ad0c53ad844d88b9161cfdf2be0b97c8b98d462af61c4173c0a10cb41c960); Second Quarter and Half-Year 2025 Budget Implementation Report, same issuer, PDF creation date 22 December 2025 (SHA-256 e3f4e72aa6bd8f3986f49028f01e96a21b93d908969d9a140ba77486b6ec2842); First Quarter 2025 Budget Implementation Report, same issuer (SHA-256 e5869d803b185d9eae14ddd3e07921a0266c2297da42919b0bf7953a8e4329d6). All three downloaded from budgetoffice.gov.ng and read in full.
Confidence: high. This is our own assessment of whether the event occurred as described, separate from the grade, which describes what kind of thing the claim rests on.
Not obtained: where the underlying document is named above but not linked, we did not hold a copy at the time of publication. We purchase nothing and request nothing in our own name.
Corrections
None on this report. If you find an error, it will be published here, at the same length, with the date it was found, and the original wording will remain visible above it.