Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of Nigeria and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, has alleged the existence of a fresh N12.8 trillion hidden allocation in Nigeria’s 2026 budget under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
Atiku made this disclosure in a statement issued by his spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu, on Monday.
He claimed that the N12.8 trillion allocation was concealed under the Service-Wide Vote, SWV in the country’s 2026 budget.
Atiku described the 2026 Federal Budget as the most brazen assault on transparency and fiscal responsibility in Nigeria’s democratic history, following what he called shocking revelations surrounding the Service-Wide Vote allocation.
He explained that 84 per cent of the entire 2026 budget is concentrated in just 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, with an astounding N12.8 trillion warehoused under the Service-Wide Vote in the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning.
According to him, the revelation exposes what appears to be a deliberate architecture for opaque and unaccountable spending under President Tinubu’s administration.
He noted that while the Service-Wide Vote stood at N638 billion in the 2025 budget, it has inexplicably ballooned to N12.8 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 N12.8 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,” he added.
