Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has described the 2026 Federal Budget as the most brazen assault on transparency and fiscal responsibility in Nigeria’s democratic history, following “shocking revelations surrounding the unprecedented allocations concealed under the Service-Wide Vote (SWV)”.
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the discovery that 84 per cent of the entire 2026 budget is concentrated in just 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with an astounding ₦12.8 trillion warehoused under the Service-Wide Vote in the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, exposes what appears to be a deliberate architecture for opaque and unaccountable spending.
He noted that while the Service-Wide Vote stood at ₦638 billion in the 2025 budget, it has ballooned to ₦12.8 trillion in the 2026 Appropriation Act—an astonishing increase of approximately 1,918 per cent in just one year.
“President Tinubu owes Nigerians a detailed explanation. No responsible government can expect citizens to accept a nineteen-fold increase in a notoriously opaque budgetary provision without disclosing exactly who will spend the money, what it will be spent on, and under what legal authority,” Atiku said.
“Should the Tinubu administration fail to come clean on this unprecedented ₦12.8 trillion Service-Wide Vote, Nigerians would be justified in suspecting that these enormous sums are being stashed away to bankroll the APC’s political machinery and President Tinubu’s re-election bid in 2027. A government with nothing to hide does not conceal trillions behind opaque budgetary headings.”
The former Vice President further queried how the Federal Ministry of Finance, the nation’s principal treasury institution, has a personnel allocation of only ₦54.8 billion, while the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is carrying an eye-watering ₦2.19 trillion personnel provision under the Service-Wide Vote.
