The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has accused the APC-led Tinubu administration of spending some N8.8trillion of public funds outside the budget, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund.
Atiku, in a statement personally signed by him on Saturday, said the IMF report published July 1, 2026 by Reuters, showed that the federal government failed to record public expenditures amounting to about 2 percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product.
“At the current valuation of Nigeria’s economy at approximately ₦441.5 trillion, this figure translates to a staggering ₦8.8 trillion in public funds spent completely outside the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited, and hidden from the Nigerian people,” Atiku said.
The former Vice President described the development as “the most consequential act of fiscal impunity in Nigeria’s recent democratic history” and called on the National Assembly, civil society, the media and other democratic institutions to give it priority.
Atiku, citing the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, said the discrepancy arises from “large-scale government projects executed entirely off-budget.”
He said, “The Tinubu administration is awarding contracts worth trillions of naira, moving huge public capital and commissioning infrastructure projects completely outside the purview of the Auditor-General, the country’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,” he said.
Atiku blamed the alleged practice on the “Alpha Beta arrangement” in Lagos State when Tinubu was governor and said a similar “off-budget economy” is now being replicated at the federal level.
“What the IMF has now documented at the federal level is that same Lagos playbook, replicated at national scale and with national consequences,” he said.
The man who mastered the art of the off-budget economy in Lagos has brought that ‘Beta’ form to Abuja and 220 million Nigerians are paying the price.
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He also claimed that ₦800 billion was “illegally deducted from the statutory allocations of state governments” without the approval of the National Assembly or court order.
He said the funds, coupled with the ₦8.8 trillion, indicate “the building of a huge, multi-source political war chest in readiness for the 2027 general elections.”
He said: “When a government is running a secret treasury of this size at the very moment when it needs to buy election results, the conclusion is not hard to draw.
The Tinubu government is not reforming the Nigerian economy. It is using Nigerian people’s money to finance its own political survival.”
Atiku also referenced the recent controversy over the ₦1.3 billion inserted into the 2026 federal budget for the “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council,” an agency the government later said did not exist.
He said it shows “the line between what exists and what is a phantom… ceases to have any practical meaning.”
The opposition leader accused the administration of inflicting austerity on Nigerians while keeping a “shadow treasury.”
He said removal of ₦8.8 trillion from the productive economy was partly responsible for policies such as removal of fuel subsidy, devaluation of naira and high interest rates.
“In the 2023 presidential election, I rolled out to Nigerians a comprehensive economic recovery programme anchored on a $10 billion stimulus package… Now the IMF has answered that question. ₦8.8 trillion… was at hand. It was not unobtainable. “It was just going down the drain,” said Atiku.
