The candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in 2027 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar said the ₦8.8 trillion unrecorded federal expenditures by the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Federal Government, is to purchase the 2027 presidency.
Atiku in a statement on Saturday, disclosed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a publication by an international newsagency on July 1, 2026, revealed that the Bola Tinubu-led APC administration failed to record public expenditures amounting to approximately two percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in recent official budgets.
According to him, with the current valuation of Nigeria’s economy at approximately ₦441.5 trillion, this figure translates to a staggering ₦8.8 trillion in public funds “spent outside the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited, and hidden from the Nigerian people.”
He recalled that he had earlier drew the attention Nigerians to the ₦800 billion that has been illegally deducted from the statutory allocations of state governments, unlawfully withheld and diverted without the authorisation of the National Assembly, without a court order, and without any constitutional basis.
“The Tinubu administration is awarding multi-trillion naira contracts, moving massive public capital, and commissioning infrastructure projects entirely beyond the reach of the Auditor-General, the nation’s procurement laws, and the legitimate oversight of the National Assembly.
“It is a parallel fiscal universe, one governed by executive whim, shielded from the constitutional accountability that the Nigerian people are owed,” he said.
The former Vice President alleged that state governments under the aegis of the Progressives Governors Forum have had their allocations deducted and used to fund projects and purposes that have never been disclosed to the Nigerian public.
“We state clearly and without equivocation that this ₦800 billion, combined with the ₦8.8 trillion in unrecorded federal expenditures, points unmistakably to the construction of a massive, multi-source political war chest being assembled ahead of the 2027 general elections,” he added.
Atiku stated that when a government operates a secret treasury of such scale “at precisely the moment it needs to purchase electoral outcomes, the conclusion is not difficult to reach.”
He said the Tinubu administration is not reforming Nigeria’s economy, but rather “it is financing its own political survival with money that belongs to the Nigerian people.”
The ADC presidential candidate noted the recent public controversy over the ₦1.3 billion inserted into the 2026 federal budget for the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, an agency the administration itself was forced to acknowledge did not exist, and said he is not surprised in this broader context.
According to him, the ghost agency and the shadow budget are not separate scandals.
“They are two expressions of the same governing philosophy: that public money belongs to those in power, to be deployed as they see fit, beyond the reach of the law and the knowledge of the public.”
Atiku added that when a government moves ₦8.8 trillion in public money outside its own official bookkeeping, “the boundary between what exists and what is a phantom, between what is appropriated and what is stolen, ceases to have any practical meaning.”
The former Vice President stated that for three years, the Tinubu administration has subjected ordinary Nigerians to untold hardships with the removal of the fuel subsidy without social safety nets, and the devaluation of Naira, which he said, wiped out the purchasing power of workers, traders, small business owners, and pensioners.
“Interest rates have been driven to levels that have effectively shut small and medium enterprises out of the credit market, strangling the productive base of the economy and accelerating unemployment at a time when Nigeria’s youth population is growing faster than any other demographic on earth,” Atiku said.
He called on the National Assembly to convene emergency investigative hearings on the IMF’s findings without further delay, and demanded that the Auditor-General of the Federation should be empowered and directed to conduct a full, independent audit of all off-budget expenditures referenced in the IMF’s Article IV consultation, and the findings published and placed in the public domain without redaction.
Atiku also said the Federal Government should provide a full and transparent public account of every Naira spent outside the official budget, identify every project, contractor, procurement process followed, and individual who authorised and benefited from these transactions.
The ADC candidate further called on Federal Government to immediately restore to state governments the ₦800 billion allegedly unlawfully deducted from their statutory allocations and provide a complete account of how those funds were deployed.
He said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and other relevant law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies should open formal investigations into both the unrecorded expenditures and the unlawful deductions from state allocations, independent of any political direction from the Presidency.
