• Atiku flays N8.05b religious budget allocation as opaque
• Civil servants decry delayed budget release, shortfalls

Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum has faulted the explanation by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, on Nigeria’s reported public debt of over N80 trillion, describing it as misleading and an attempt to avoid responsibility for the economic consequences of the President Bola Tinubu administration’s policy choices.

In another development, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has condemned the federal government’s allocation of about N8.05 billion in the 2026 budget for mosque and church-related projects, demanding that the presidency publish the names and locations of every beneficiary institution.

Meanwhile, a Lagos chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Seye Oladejo, has applauded the federal government’s cocoa development initiative as a strategic pathway to economic diversification and sustainable growth.

The Southwest socio-political group said Oyedele’s claim that the increase in the debt stock was largely an accounting adjustment failed to address the real issues behind the country’s worsening fiscal position.

In a statement yesterday, the forum’s President, Akin Malaolu, noted that the minister attributed the debt increase to two major factors: the depreciation of the naira, which reportedly added over N40 trillion to Nigeria’s foreign currency-denominated debt through exchange rate revaluation, and the securitisation of about N33 trillion in inherited Ways and Means advances approved by the National Assembly.

Oyedele had also maintained that the government’s actual new borrowings were considerably lower and largely intended to refinance maturing obligations.

However, Malaolu dismissed the explanation as “deliberately evasive,” arguing that the government could not blame exchange-rate revaluation for a crisis created by its own policies.

“Local debts are denominated in naira, while foreign debts naturally rise in naira value when the currency collapses. The government cannot now lament a revaluation crisis of its own making after celebrating the same devaluation for boosting government revenues,” he said.

He argued that the simultaneous floating of the naira and the increase in energy costs, without a credible stabilisation framework, fuelled inflation, weakened the economy, and significantly inflated Nigeria’s debt burden. According to Malaolu, “the debt burden the government now seeks to explain away is the direct consequence of its own policy decisions.”

The forum also accused the administration of failing to improve living standards or create jobs despite the painful reforms. It criticised Oyedele’s explanation as focusing on accounting entries rather than the broader economic implications of the government’s monetary and fiscal policies.

Against this backdrop, it urged the federal government to acknowledge the consequences of its economic reforms, review its policy direction and engage broader economic expertise to restore confidence and prevent a further deterioration of the economy.

In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said that while faith occupies a sacred place in national life, it must never become a sanctuary for opaque budgeting or questionable public expenditure.

According to an analysis by the public accountability organisation, Tracka, about N1.91 billion has been allocated to church-related projects and N6.14 billion to mosque-related projects.

“Under the Nigerian law, religious bodies generally operate as incorporated trustees with distinct legal identities,” Atiku noted. “If public funds are appropriated for projects involving such bodies, Nigerians have a right to know exactly which churches, which mosques, and in which communities those projects will be executed.”

He noted that, unlike roads, schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure that are ordinarily identified by location and beneficiary, the allocations reportedly failed to identify many specific beneficiary churches and mosques.

“Though we tread with profound meticulousness in matters that relate to the Almighty, so as not to attract spiritual jabs from the overly sensitive faithful, it is a desecration of faith to commit public funds in God’s name while withholding the information that would enable citizens to verify where their money is going,” he added.

“Government cannot invoke the sanctity of religion to evade the standards of openness demanded in the management of public resources.”

The former vice president accused the Tinubu administration of crossing “the moral red line by dragging the altar and the minbar into the marketplace of opaque budgeting”, insisting that if the appropriations are genuine, the presidency should immediately publish the names of every beneficiary institution, every project location, every implementing agency, and the legal basis for the allocations.

“Anything less will reinforce the growing perception that religion is being exploited as a convenient cover for diverting public resources.

“The altar and the minbar are sacred spaces for moral instruction and spiritual guidance, not convenient hiding places for questionable appropriations. Government must not seek to stain the integrity of our religious institutions or infect men and women of faith with the leprous fingers of fiscal filth.

“God is not a laundering machine for public funds. The Tinubu administration has no moral or legal licence to hide behind the altar, the minbar, or the sacred robes of our priests and imams to mask questionable appropriations.

“The government must keep its leprous fingers of fiscal filth away from our sacred institutions. Faith must never become a camouflage for budgeting by concealment.”

In the meantime, some civil servants in Abuja yesterday urged the federal government to release budgetary allocations to its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to improve service delivery, stating that a lack of funds was hampering their efforts to deliver on their overall mandates.

Many MDAs have been unable to fully implement approved projects and programmes as funds were either delayed or not released, with the funding shortfall affecting both capital and recurrent expenditure, and slowing the delivery of public services.

The statistics of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper 2025 of the Budget Office of the Federation showed that MDAs’ capital expenditure votes were persistently underfunded.

According to the report, a cumulative gap of N15.21 trillion hangs over the three years covering 2023, 2024, and the January–July period of 2025.

Expressing concern about the financial challenges confronting federal institutions, a director in the finance department of one of the MDAs, Mr Thomas Ugwu, said inadequate funding had adversely affected operations and service delivery.

According to him, office equipment, including staff buses, frequently breaks down, while the offices lack the funds to repair them.

Also, a senior civil servant in the procurement unit, Mrs Rukayat Olaiya, said funding for capital projects had remained particularly poor. On his part, another civil servant, Mr Kelechi Akwa, said the releases for recurrent expenditure had also come under pressure, forcing many agencies to operate mainly on limited overhead allocations.

According to him, monthly cash-backed releases for capital projects are also frequently delayed, while numerous infrastructure and development projects have stalled and contractors continue to await payment for completed and ongoing jobs.

Meanwhile, the President of AICAN, Mr Jackson Nwosu, who led a recent protest at the Ministry of Finance, had warned that the association might be compelled to take further action if the outstanding payments were not settled.

However, Oladejo offered a different perspective on the administration’s economic agenda, describing the federal government’s cocoa development initiative as a bold move to reduce dependence on crude oil and strengthen non-oil exports.

He said the programme would encourage local cocoa processing, boost foreign exchange earnings, create jobs, attract investment in agro-processing and manufacturing, and improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers through better financing, improved seedlings, and expanded market access.

Nevertheless, he stressed that the initiative would require transparent implementation, policy consistency, reliable infrastructure, affordable financing and effective regulation to achieve its objectives.

According to him, if successfully implemented, the cocoa initiative could serve as a template for revitalising other agricultural value chains, including cashew, sesame, palm produce and cotton, thereby accelerating Nigeria’s long-term economic transformation.