By Abiola Olawale
The Nigerian Senate has handed the Finance Ministry a two-week deadline to deliver a detailed performance report on the 2024 budget.
The New Diplomat reports that the directive emerged from a high-stakes closed-door meeting at the National Assembly between the Senate Committee on Finance and President Bola Tinubu’s economic team.
Led by Chairman Senator Sani Musa (Niger East), the lawmakers demanded a “holistic, documented progress report” on the 2024 budget’s execution, including verifiable data on capital releases, revenue performance, and debt servicing.
Without this, Musa said the committee will refuse to advance discussions on the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) for 2026-2028.
He said: “We have heard the position at which the 2024 budget is, and the position of the 2025 budget. And the expectations we are having for the ministry are to, as a matter of urgency, bring the MTEF for 2026 to 2029.
“The minister has briefed us, and we have collectively agreed that we are making progress, but we need to make more progress.
“We have heard from the accountant-general, we have heard from the director of budgets, where we are with the budgets — the payments that have so far been released, the warrants that have so far been signed, and also the 2025 authority to incur expenditure for agencies to be able to release their capital projects.
“We have agreed that we are making progress. And we expect that, with what Mr President has done just this week, sending a letter to the national assembly requesting more approvals for loans, the 2025 budget will be adequately taken care of.
“We have all agreed that we will want documented evidence of the performance of 2024, and our expectations for the 2025 budget, before we start talking about the MTEF for 2026.
“The Honourable Minister of Finance has agreed to oblige us by giving us that progress report. And we have agreed to reconvene on the 23rd of October.”
Before the committee went into a closed-door session, Edun stated that the government is recording “high performance” in the implementation of the 2024 capital budget, adding that the 2025 fiscal plan was also on track.
