Nigeria’s spending habits have crossed into what former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is calling outright fiscal vandalism, following revelations that the Federal Government blew past its 2024 borrowing ceiling by N4.79 trillion, driving total fresh borrowing to N12.62 trillion in a single year.
In a statement issued Wednesday through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the ADC presidential candidate framed the overshoot as a direct betrayal of promises made when the government pushed through fuel subsidy removal and repeated tax hikes. Those sacrifices, Atiku said, were supposed to buy Nigeria fiscal discipline. Instead, citing Budget Office figures, he pointed out that the government borrowed 61.2 per cent more than what the National Assembly had actually approved, an outcome he described as evidence of a government that has lost its grip on public finances entirely.
Adding to his unease was a separate N3.19 trillion obtained under the label of “budget support,” a category Atiku says appears nowhere in the approved budget and comes with no clear explanation of where the money originated. For him, that opacity is not a one-off lapse but part of a broader pattern he associates with the current administration, one he linked to fake agency creation, duplicated budget allocations, funds tucked away under the Service Wide Vote, and lavish SUV purchases even as essential sectors go underfunded.
That contradiction is where Atiku’s criticism sharpened most. He questioned what all the borrowed money is actually funding, arguing it clearly isn’t education, given the conditions children still learn under, nor healthcare, with hospitals starved of resources, nor security, even as Nigerians continue to lose their lives to violence while agencies plead poverty, nor infrastructure, pointing to dangerous roads and electricity costs that have become prohibitive for ordinary citizens.
He also flagged what he sees as a glaring inconsistency: despite an estimated N7.98 trillion windfall from elevated crude oil prices in recent days, the government has continued adding debt rather than easing off borrowing. Compounding the concern, he cited Budget Office data showing debt servicing alone consumed N12.36 trillion, more than 52 per cent above budget, a trajectory he warned is pushing Nigeria toward a state where government exists mainly to borrow in order to repay what it already owes.
For Atiku, the pattern points to something structural rather than accidental. He argued that revenue increases, tax hikes, subsidy removal, and even padded budgets all seem to lead to the same outcome: more borrowing. “This is not governance. It is a debt addiction,” he said, repeatedly asking where the money is actually going.
He closed by calling for a government willing to live within its means, eliminate waste, restore transparency, and redirect public resources toward productive investment rather than sustaining an unending borrowing cycle. “The Nigerian people cannot continue paying today’s taxes to service yesterday’s loans while tomorrow’s generations inherit only debt,” he said.
