Tinubu's N8.8 Trillion Ghost Budget Exposed by IMF

Atiku Abubakar has dropped a nuclear bomb on the Tinubu administration today, revealing that the International Monetary Fund caught the federal government spending N8.8 trillion completely off the books. That is two percent of our entire GDP, gone like smoke, no record, no audit, no National Assembly oversight. The IMF resident representative Christian Ebeke documented this in their latest Article IV consultation published on July 1, 2026.

Atiku said something that should chill every Nigerian to the bone, and I quote: "The Tinubu administration is awarding multi-trillion naira contracts, moving massive public capital, and commissioning infrastructure projects entirely beyond the reach of the Auditor-General, the nation's procurement laws, and the legitimate oversight of the National Assembly. It is a parallel fiscal universe." He then connected this directly to Tinubu's Lagos days, the infamous Alpha Beta arrangement where between 10 and 30 percent of Lagos IGR vanished before it hit the budget. The man simply brought his Lagos playbook to Abuja and scaled it up.

There is also N800 billion illegally deducted from state government allocations, money belonging to the Progressives Governors Forum that was diverted without court order or constitutional basis. Atiku says this combined N9.6 trillion is a political war chest for 2027. The question I keep asking myself is simple: if the EFCC and ICPC can investigate a poor man who stole a phone, why can they not investigate N8.8 trillion of our commonwealth? Or is the law only for poor people?