The Federal Government may extend the 2025 budget into 2026, as slow capital project implementation, procurement delays, and a shutdown of the cash-planning portal have left many projects stalled about eight months into the fiscal year.
The possibility of a rollover came to light at a stakeholders’ engagement in Abuja on Wednesday, organised by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation to review progress and challenges in implementing the extended 2024 capital budget and the 2025 capital budget under the Bottom-Up Cash Planning Policy.
Before any contract is signed, It was learnt that ministries, departments, and agencies must submit a monthly cash plan on an online platform that the OAGF provides. This cash plan outlines the projects to be funded and the amounts needed, and the OAGF reviews and consolidates it into a federal cash plan before sending it to the Ministry of Finance for approval.
Once approved, the ministry issues warrants, which are formal authorizations to spend, which are then sent back to the OAGF to be uploaded on the same portal. Only then can MDAs upload their payment plans, following which funds are released directly to contractors, suppliers, or beneficiaries.
However, the service has been inaccessible for inputting cash plans for 2025 contracts and expenses since May. Warrants cannot be issued without cash plans, payment plans cannot be submitted without warrants, and monies cannot be released without payment plans.
“We are complaining that the platform has been blocked since none of us could upload our cash plans since May,” a director-general from a health sector organization told .
The Federation’s Accountant-General, Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, presided over the meeting and explained that the purpose of the BUCPP was to make sure the government stayed within its budget by needing warrants or authorities to incur expenditure before promises were made. He charged that several MDAs were granting contracts merely because they were budgeted for, without considering cash availability, in violation of the Public Procurement Act 2007 and other laws.
Additionally, he criticized the practice of severely burdening cash needs with staff-related expenses and mobilization fees while excluding funding for ongoing and finished initiatives. He claimed that as a result, some contractors were compelled to take out high-interest bank loans, leaving important government projects neglected.
“No MDA can award a new contract or process any capital payments in the GIFMIS platform without [a warrant],” Ogunjimi said. He went on to say that financial plans for the expanded 2024 budget that were filed in February and March had already been justified and that authorized but unused payments were currently being finalized.
Ogunjimi gave them his word that promises made earlier would be kept. The contract has been loaded on the GIFMIS platform, cash one has been completed, and it has become an obligation to the government that we are prepared to finance and will fund, he stated.
However, he clarified that “any new entrance” will be regarded as a new contract upon the portal’s reopening and will have to adhere to the updated procedure. He insisted that the Capital Development Fund had sufficient assets to cover warrants and asked accounting officers to begin payment initiation where warrants had been issued.
Wale Edun, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, supported the Treasury’s position. He emphasized that “unless corresponding warrants and AIEs covering the full or committed portion have been duly released, no letter of award is to be issued, contract signed, or any financial obligation entered into.”
Edun stated that by paying suppliers and contractors directly, without the use of intermediaries, the BUCPP aimed to make the payment system “more rigorous, more transparent, more accountable.”
While acknowledging that the government must fulfill its current responsibilities, he stated that the top objective was to allocate fresh capital to profitable ventures that would boost the economy, provide employment, and help millions of people escape poverty. He stated, “We spend what we have earned,” and cautioned that the long-standing practice of allocating monies without authorization ought to halt “right now, right here.”
Nigeria has lost almost 60% of its gross oil revenue due to deductions under the Petroleum Industry Act 2022, which gives 30% to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited for management fees and another 30% to the Frontier Exploration Fund, according to Tanimu Yakubu, the Director-General of the Federation’s Budget Office.
“We lost a significant portion of what used to fund 80% of public expenditures once the Act went into effect without new revenue sources to make up the loss,” Yakubu stated. He went on to say that because of low pricing and output shortages, oil revenues have done even worse in the first half of 2025.
He claimed that the government was forced to classify all spending into Category A, B, and C projects because 2025 revenues were utilized early in the year to finance the prolonged 2024 budget, which made the situation worse. Yakubu claimed to have started the process of amending the PIA in order to recoup a portion of the lost revenue in the National Assembly.
He also revealed that the Finance Ministry would raise the remaining amount to close the extended 2024 capital budget without further depleting 2025 funds, even if not all of the loans authorized under the 2024 National Borrowing Plan were increased.
Regarding procurement, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun, Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, supported the warrant-first strategy. He reminded MDAs that mobilization fees were limited to 30% under the Finance Act and stated that projects lacking sufficient warrants or appropriate planning would “no longer be issued with relevant certification.”
Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Dr Mohammed Shehu, emphasised the need to mobilise more revenue. He noted that monthly allocations shared to states had risen from about N700bn in 2022–2023 to N1.7tn currently, and described ongoing reforms, especially in tax, as vital to plugging leakages and increasing funds for development.
Director of Funds at OAGF, Steve Ehikhamenor, broke down the operational changes. On 28th February 2025, he said, the total amount of capital transfers from 2024 was automatically added to the 2025 capital budget on the OAGF platform, increasing the funding requirement.
MDAs are required to submit their financial and legal obligations as monthly cash needs under the updated BUCPP. The OAGF then compiles these commitments and forwards them to the Finance Ministry for warrants. The OAGF finances the site and makes direct payments to recipients after warrants are issued.
He affirmed that other unprocessed plans were being processed and that financial plans submitted between February and March under the expanded 2024 budget had been justified. Moving forward, no spending, including staff payables, may be made without a warrant, and MDAs are required to present distinct yearly implementation plans for the extended 2024 and 2025 budgets.
He stated that the money was available and would not be diverted, and he asked MDAs with active warrants to start making payments right away. The tensions were exposed during the interactive session. Agriculture authorities expressed dissatisfaction about the possibility that waiting for warrants might cause seasonal undertakings, including the distribution of fertilizer, to miss their planting windows.
Others questioned what would happen to award letters that had already been sent out while the gateway was closed. Contracts with completed cash plans that are already loaded on the platform would be funded, Ogunjimi retorted. He declared, “It is a commitment and we are going to fund it.”
A permanent secretary warned that contractors were increasingly refusing to accept award letters without monetary backing and advocated issuing warrants first so MDAs could set realistic priorities. Delays between budget approval and release caused some constituency projects to become outdated before they received funding, according to another participant.
In order to make sure that spending remained within National Assembly approvals, that warrants matched appropriated rollover amounts, that quarterly cash plans reflected legislative priorities, and that unspent 2024 balances were ring-fenced for their original projects, Yakubu from the Budget Office later presented compliance “guardrails.”
There was still no set deadline for reopening the portal to post 2025 cash plans at the conclusion of the stakeholder consultation. Senior officials present acknowledged that, like the continuing extension of the 2024 budget to December 31, 2025, a rollover into 2026 might be taken into consideration.
According to reports, President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly came under fresh fire when the Senate and the House of Representatives prolonged the implementation of the 2024 budget’s capital component to December 31, 2025, for the second time.
Earlier, a federal ministry source revealed that the 2025 national budget’s implementation has not yet begun. The senior official, who spoke off the record out of concern for potential victimization, claimed that all ministry activities and expenses were still carried out using the 2024 budget, which resulted in several delays in payments to government employees and contractors.
Dr. Aliyu Ilias, an Abuja-based development economist, had characterized the capital budget’s recurring extensions as a concerning trend that would skew the nation’s financial process. Ilias cautioned in a phone interview that managing two capital budgets at the same time may lead to duplication and less transparency in the way projects are carried out.
