President Bola Tinubu’s administration spent only N3.10 trillion on capital projects in the first nine months of 2025 despite accessing N11.89 trillion from various debt financing sources during the period.
This highlighted the wide gap between borrowing and infrastructure spending of the administration.
According to the latest data from the Budget Office of the Federation’s Third Quarter 2025 Budget Implementation Report, the total debt financing inflows stood at N11.89 trillion as of September 2025, comprising N7.08 trillion in domestic borrowing and N4.81 trillion in multilateral and bilateral project-tied loans.
The actual capital expenditure amounted to N3.10 trillion over the same period, representing just 26.07 per cent of total financing receipts.
The figure was also significantly below the prorated capital expenditure target of N17.58 trillion for the first three quarters of the year, with actual spending falling billow N14.48 trillion, or 82.3 per cent.
According to a breakdown of the spending, the capital expenditure by Ministries, Departments, and Agencies amounted to N1.21 trillion, while Government-Owned Enterprises spent N615.68 trillion. Grants and donor-funded projects accounted for N1.08 trillion.
The breakdown showed that no expenditure was recorded under the multilateral and bilateral project-tied loan component despite a three-quarter budget provision of N2.52 trillion for such projects.
The report attributed the slow pace of project implementation partly to administrative and cash management challenges.
“Cash management bottlenecks — including bottom-up cash planning delays — continue to slow project execution and raise project cost risks,” the Budget Office disclosed.
The figures indicate that while the government continued to rely heavily on domestic and external financing to support budget execution, only a fraction of the borrowed funds had translated into actual capital project spending by the end of the third quarter.
Economists had warned that rising Federal Government borrowing from the domestic financial system is increasingly crowding out the private sector, as banks favour low-risk, high-yield government securities over lending to businesses.
Reacting to criticisms of the government’s growing debt profile, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Dr Tanimu Yakubu, argued that deficit financing and public borrowing were established tools of macroeconomic management rather than signs of fiscal recklessness.
