₦airaland Forum

timbabng:
The headline is meant to be alarming because they know most Nigerians are educated illiterates.

A big chunk of the borrowing was multilateral/bilateral loans. These are project-tied borrowing, so the money may have been approved or drawn down, but projects haven’t yet reached the disbursement stage.

The report also said the budget line for those project-tied loans recorded “zero spending” during the period reviewed, which means the money has not been spent!

Why can't Nigerians read information available online by themselves?!!

The only concern here is that implementation is slow, majorly because of bureaucracy!

It is way beyond their mental capacities and ability to understand. You wonder why one even bothers to respond or engage as all you get are insults.

Kukutente23:
Are you interpreting or correcting him now?
Same people claimed that non-oil revenue has exceeded oil revenue and yet you're here saying oil revenue is bigger
Where are you getting your own info from

I believe the President was wrong. The real situation was made known by Wale Edun. Projected revenue was N42trn while actual receipt was about N11trn, a massive shortfall.

So in that situation, capital expenditure of about N15trn will not be adequately funded. Priority will be given to recurrent expenditure (N14trn) and debt service (N16.8trn).

jogojogo:
The article is mostly true but presented in a way that creates a misleading impression. The numerical data it cites appears accurate and aligns with patterns seen in Nigeria’s official Budget Implementation Reports, where borrowing overruns, capital under‑execution and delays in project‑tied loan disbursements are common.

However, the interpretation is incomplete and framed to imply scandal or hidden misuse of funds without providing the necessary fiscal context. It does not explain that Nigeria’s borrowing covers both recurrent and capital expenditure, meaning it is incorrect to compare total borrowing directly to capital spending as if they should match.

A large share of borrowing goes to salaries, pensions, debt servicing, subsidies and statutory transfers, none of which fall under capital expenditure. The article also omits that Nigeria operates a cash‑based release system, where capital funds are only released when procurement steps are completed and cash is available, which routinely delays capital spending.

Additionally, multilateral and bilateral project‑tied loans are not disbursed immediately; they require procurement processes, environmental assessments and project readiness steps. Therefore, “zero spending” in a given quarter does not mean the money is missing — it often means the project has not reached the disbursement stage.

In summary, the data is accurate but the framing is selective, highlighting borrowing overruns and capital underspending without explaining the structural, procedural and regulatory reasons behind them. This makes the article a half‑truth: factually correct numbers presented in a way that suggests wrongdoing or mystery where there may be none.

Fantastic. Shows you understand the key issues. A balanced view of the issues always helps. Apart from paying salaries, pensions and all those recurrent expenditure, debt servicing also weighs heavily on govt finances. Could govt have negotiated debt repayments? Could it have restructured recurrent expenditure to reduce that particular burden? Govt could do a lot but typical reaction is to make capital expenditure the fall guy.

Kukutente23:
But your god said he met revenue target in August
What are you balabluing here

He met non oil revenue target but not the oil revenue one which is much bigger. Reason why Wale Edun made that outburst which seemed to contradict his boss.

Wale Edun as Finance Minister and the budget office DG are the first people to blame for not been diligent enough in challenging the basis of oil revenue projections because so much depends on it. It is not enough to put your hands up in the sky and say, see oil price was lower than budgeted or that oil volume targets couldn't be met. There are consequences for that as the President ultimately bears responsibility.

NB - we are having a conversation. Need to keep it civil.

Good to see the report in full. My guess is that projected oil revenues fell way short from a volume and price perspective that the additional shortfall on top of the existing budget deficit has to be covered through borrowings, majority of which will go into recurrent expenditure. Of course capital allocations will be the first to suffer. Those that are familiar with managing corporate organisations will understand this.

Why do people believe Kwankwaso will have it easy in 2031? He is from the NW, same region where the past 2 Northern Presidents came from, PMB and UMYA. I don't believe the NE and NC will roll over for yet another NW candidate to become President. It is likely the NE will be favourably disposed.

Good move. We cannot do without massive infrastructure, a gateway to substantial development.

However, the contract sum of N548bln is huge. Compare this with the N750bln for the MMIA airport in Lagos and 2nd Niger bridge.

Isn't this the guy sacked for conflict of interest? There is existing generation capacity of about 13GW but can only transmit and distribute max of 5GW because of structurally and financially deficient discos which the same govt hurriedly put together to reward their cronies with the backing of the law. Why not focus on that rather than building new generating power stations? Priorities, priorities, focus.

15,000 barrels per day at peak production is great but it is not much at all compared with his refinery's 650,000 barrels per day requirement. His salvation WILL NOT come from there.

Furthermore, he is now an upstream producer who will contribute to supplying other domestic refineries part of this crude oil. It is what it is.

Apparently ADC and others have not being paying attention. The decision by PBAT was taken after series of reconciliation meetings between FAAC and NNPCL were held over several months, leading to the position reached during Nov 2025 FAAC meeting. All tiers of govt were part of the reconciliation with the President only assenting to close the loop.

https://fij.ng/article/explainer-no-evidence-n210trn-in-nnpc-audit-is-missing-just-poorly-explained/

Excerpts from above article.

Quote
'FIJ examined the audit documents and found that these figures are likely not missing. The standard definition of accrued expenses is costs NNPCL has incurred but not yet paid for. This means that the NNPCL owes N103 trillion between 2017 and 2023.

Recievables on the other hand, represent money NNPCL is owed, usually from services already delivered. By implication, NNPCL is entitled to N107 trillion from the outside within the same time frame.

Therefore rather than combine, these two figures should cancel out when reconciled, since they represent debts owed by and to the NNPCL.'
End of Quote

In simple accounting terms, receivables should cancel out accrued expenses and a nil off or small residual amount remaining. The issue is with the accounting procedure and approval process which should be done quicker than allowing to linger for years.

Does it make any sense of a missing N210trillion btw 2017 and 2023 when total country budget is about N88trillion within that same time?

Let us assume we produced 1.5million barrels of oil per day in that period (7 years from 2017 to 2023) at an average price of $60 per barrel. NNPCL share in the Joint Ventures and PSCs is roughly 50% for onshore and offshore production. These are generous assumptions because both oil production and price crashed during the covid years of 2020 and 2021. Nonetheless, the calculations are as below;

Revenue = 1.5mil barrels per day x 365days/yr x 7yrs x $60 per barrel × 50% nnpc share = $115billion

From this revenue, you remove Royalty of roughly 15% paid to govt as first line charge.

Revenue - Royalty = $115bln x 85% = $98bln

You then remove cost of producing the oil which is about 30%.

Post cost removal = $98bln x 70% = $68bln

On this amount, nnpc pays roughly 70% tax to govt

Post tax = $68bln x 30% = $20bln

Assume exchange rate of N400/$ for 2017-2022 and N1600/$ for 2023, average is about N600/$ for the 7 year period.

Post tax profit of $20bln at an average exchange rate of N600/$ is = N12T for the entire 7 years.

Let us even assume for argument sake that the entire nnpc revenue of $115bln is converted to Naira, it comes to N69trillion. This is assuming NOTHING at all was remitted to govt from nnpc which is clearly not the case because our budget of N88trn within those 7 years was largely funded from receipts from nnpc.

It is good for people to step back and stop throwing mind boggling figures around. The 2023 audited nnpc report clearly shows some lapses in governance of JVs, pending approvals, inadequate documentation, poor reconciliation etc. Clearly, with those things sorted, the 2024 audited report should look cleaner and better.

Footnote: I have only analysed oil revenues. It is fair to say nnpc earns revenue from gas sales and some of its midstream businesses too but oil revenue still dominates. NNPCL hardly made money in the downstream as they were selling fuel at a loss due to subsidy.

Interesting how those who didn't hold GEJ accountable for not doing the one project that connects the entire Niger Delta together during his tenure are now lambasting current govt for commissioning in phases. I criticised the extremely slow pace of work by RCC on that stretch of road in the past 2 yrs but was pleasantly surprised to see the progress in recent months particularly the Eleme-Akpajo stretch.

Partial commissioning or not, one side of that stretch is motorable and drivable. All we should ask for is the speedy completion of the other side of the dual carraigeway. The road houses the Eleme Petrochemicals, PortHarcourt Refinery and the Onne port, critical national infrastructure.

Why does Olisa Agbakoba SAN not focus on Supreme Court's ruling that mandates direct funds disbursement to local govts that is being frustrated by governors and the local govt chairmen themselves? That is the quickest way to devolve power to the grass roots. With how much money states and local govts have received in past 2 years, what have they done with it other than fritter it away? I will even advocate that rather than sharing the money, we put it in a pot to tackle a key issue like Power.

No money was saved from subsidy removal. We only stopped borrowing money we did not have to fund subsidy hence fixing the hole in our fiscals. We need to pay off all those loans taken to fund subsidy before we start enjoying 'subsidy savings'. That can still take another 2- 4 years in my opinion.

LeopardX:
What about Tony Elumelu? Has he been relegated to the background? Man was parading the streets of Lagos the other day looking for Sallah meat.

Anyways jokes apart, we also need strong institutions, not only strong men....or wise men as the case may be.

My exact question when I read this. Tony is arguably more of Tinubu's right hand man fhan these four. But it seems the President was referring to those 4 as they accompanied him to that occasion. Tony Elumelu wasn't there I believe.

Rivers people should look on the bright side. Fubara's budget was about N800bln or so. This is almost double Fubara's budget. But this does not look like Fubara is returning anytime soon.

When this govt cleared the $7bln obligations to investors, people still tried to twist it. That is $3.4bln IMF + $7bln obligations totaling $10.4bln paid.

States are also paying down their debts substantially. If it is not yet apparent to folks, mark it today - PBAT will ensure he substantially clears Nigeria's debts before he leaves office. Anything to eclipse OBJ's achievements is part of what motivates Tinubu. Watch the space.

The PUNCH Newspaper has always been a fierce critic of the Tinubu administration so no surprise with this editorial. Citing the 'hasty' removal of fuel subsidy and forex harmonisation as two policies that are failing clearly shows the paper's bias and mindset.

However it is looked at, those two policies may have been put in place very fast but delaying those decisions would have made it more difficult to implement as we have seen through the decades. I firmly believe that posterity will reveal that those policies were best pronounced and implemented at the time they were done despite the initial shoddy implementation and hardship it brought in the short term.

The other subtle threat is the comparison of this state of emergency declaration with that of Balewa's govt and the series of events that eventually led to the civil war. If no war broke out when OBJ declared state of emergencies in 2 states and forced out governors in some others, why are the alarm bells now ringing with this declaration?

Natasha said she submitted her CV to highly placed individuals of which this Minister is one. How does she get connected to these 'highly placed individuals'? Not every lady can do that. Is she using her beauty to gain favours?

Key reason for this drop in inflation rate is the change of base year from 2009 to 2023/2024 to reflect recent trends. Why was this base year left for so long at 2009?

Though prices are gradually coming down, it is still not fast enough for ordinary people on the streets. Much reduced inflation rate is a positive step, next is to sustain crash in forex to bring it to below N1000 to the Dollar, alongside continuous crash in petrol prices to N500-600 per litre range and finally massive food price crash.

We need inflation and interest rates at single digits soon enough.

COMPAQ:
Stupid allegation, this PETROAN is talking a lot these days and most of it nonsense.

When we had no refinery working on Nigeria, was the 500k barrels supposed to be piling up somewhere doing nothing? Of course the IOCs and NNPC lifted their share and sold internationally. And some of those contracts that have been in place for years are hard to break. And also asides that IOCs don't want to sell to local refiners due to credit issues. Only Dangote is very likely to pay you. The other smaller ones are huge credit risk. And FG refineries should be buying their crude from NNPC. If NNPC can't supply 150k barrels to its refineries despite owning 55%, is it Shell that should be supplying 500k with it's paltry 30%?

And at the moment there is no specific allocation of volume for domestic refining to anyone. It is supposed to be on a willing buyer willing seller basis. And it will still be in dollars anyway.

Thank you. PETROAN talks too much and I dare say they know very little. Every JV Partner lifts its own share of crude oil for sale. As per PIA, the regulator allocates domestic crude that each equity lifting party delivers to domestic refineries. There are clear commercial terms under which those transactions should take place.

What the regulator should be doing is publishing domestic allocations based on production and what each party is lifting, what is delivered, at what terms and data around shortfalls or oversupply. Then it is clear who is in default and appropriate sanctions meted out.

As you observed, many of the smaller players are not credit worthy and they sometimes don't pay up for crude allocated and supplied. The companies including NNPC that own the larger share are not Father Christmasses. This is the same reason that Dangote sells its refined products in bulk to the very big traders who can pay for such large allocations as many of these smaller marketers don't have the financial muscle to deal.

That said, the data should be published so everyone knows where the fault lies. The regulators must be commended for trying to enforce this, noting that Nigeria needs all the revenues it can get while also robustly supplying the local refineries. Both objectives may not always be in tandem.

It is clear that there is pressure on Julius Berger. The likes of HiTech and Craneburg with more connections to people in govt are waiting on the wings to take over most of these 'lucrative' projects.

COMPAQ:
Oga calm down! Where are you seeing $20b to $30bl from?
Bonga North FID na $5bln
The Total FID na $600mln
This HI FID, I doubt it will be more than $1bln to $1.5bln

This HI project is about $2.5bln. Exxon's Owo offshore project will be about $10bln when it takes FID. Shell Offshore in Nigeria has the Bonga South West oil project of about $10bln and a giant gas field development of about $5bln both at advanced stages of feasibility and concept definition. There are others from ENI, Chevron, Shell Onshore etc. Add this to the $5.6bln from the 2 projects that have taken FID already. Do you still think I should be calming down?

Good news all over. We are witnessing unprecedented investment in the oil and gas sector. 2 significant Final Investment Decisions (FID) announced in 2024, this HI project has its FID imminent within the first half of 2025, several other significant FIDs lined up. We are looking at close to $20-30bln investments coming in.

Almost all pending onshore assests and share sales to indigenous companies deals have received ministerial consent, laying the foundation for tremendous growth in oil and gas production, controlled mostly by indigenous companies. Future is really bright.

I encourage hasty completion of Ajaokuta Steel revamp and other such steel revamps around the country to take advantage of the steel requirement for these huge projects. Fabrication yards, construction and assembly yards are required to domesticate much of these project spend.

This same Secondus and co that fought Wike over Fubara's emergence as Governor? Now they are forming emergency supporters. Fubara should watch his back. He should milk their support for all it is worth but stylishly dissociate himself from them and not take them seriously.

Farooq schooled and lives in the USA. As a Muslim, he adheres to a 'foreign' religion. What moral right does he have to question another person's choices on where to vacation?

Can anyone say OBJ, Yaradua and GEJ never visited, holidayed or did business in UK, USA, Canada or anywhere else abroad? We should focus on things that matter, not distractions.

We should ask why Tinubu is yet to reshuffle his dull and largely ineffective cabinet. Why is it taking forever for decisions made to translate to reality? Like the Executive Orders on faster and more efficient contracting processes, like the incentives to importers of short term food, phamaceutical manufacturing input etc??

The decade to 2014 witnessed high oil price, high export oil volumes and an artificially strong Naira, defended by much of what was earned from high price.

That said, the single most destructive economic issue from 2014 to date is inability to produce high oil volumes which would have provided enough Dollars to back the currency and boost economic activities.

victorDanladi:
But you people claim Tinubu gas no business. How come he owns the nation newspaper.

We also just discovered that Tinubu now has a family member who is his cousin or nephew called wale Tinubu. After you guys have propagated the propaganda that he has no root nor family members

You just discovered Wale Tinubu?
Someone who has being doing business for 30 years?

Ebuchi688:
20? 1for each state of 36? Tinubu na mad man... we should be looking at 1000 for a start

First 20 of many to come

Oil theft has been declining. Tony himself mentioned how 95% oil was stolen before Shell had to shut down their pipeline. That enormous theft has declined to about 18% now which is still huge. Average over the last 20yrs is about 20-25%.

Oil producers have learnt how to evacuate their oil via alternative means thereby limiting possibility of oil theft. It is more expensive but better than 20% of their oil been stolen. Tony knows this and should tell us about these efforts rather than just saying the same thing since 1890.

Truth is that oil theft has reduced since a year ago but more needs to be done to limit it to 5% or completely eliminated.

The write up though raises some issues, but completely delved into ethnic baiting which I perceive as trying to be clever by half. As someone mentioned, Nigeria has more than 200 ethnic groups but the article focused on the big 3 that have always been our problem as a nation.

It occured to me that this is a Tribune post, an Afenifere mouthpiece. If you look at it that way, you will understand the motivation and agenda.

NGsultan:
https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2024/08/five-lessons-from-ongoing-hunger.html?m=1

'Everywhere in the world—from South America to the Pacific and from Asia to Africa—from the 1980s (when the IMF first forced Structural Adjustment Programs on developing countries) until now, there is not a single example of a country that has escaped irreversible devastation and decline as a result of subsidy removal, currency devaluation, destruction of social safety nets for the poor, abandonment of the welfare of citizens—all IMF policies that countries are forced to implement as conditions to secure World Bank loans.

The only countries that have developed outside the West are precisely the countries that have repulsed the IMF, that have strategically deployed subsidies to buoy their economies and uplift their people, and that have guarded their national currencies. Many young Nigerians now realize that the idea that the pains they are suffering are mere temporary birth pangs that will deliver a bouncing baby is a damned, soulless, conscienceless, self-centered lie. They’ve had enough.'

This above quote from Farooq is false and misleading. Below is the outcome of a little research on the subject;

There are several examples of countries that have successfully implemented IMF and World Bank advice to float and devalue their currencies, which subsequently led to positive economic outcomes.

Mexico:
During the mid-1990s, Mexico faced a severe financial crisis. To address this, the country devalued the peso and shifted to a more flexible exchange rate regime under IMF guidance. These measures, combined with other economic reforms, helped stabilize Mexico's economy, reduce the current account deficit, and restore investor confidence. Over time, Mexico experienced economic recovery and growth, illustrating the benefits of such reforms​ (IMF)​.

Russia:
Russia adopted a floating exchange rate regime in 2014 in response to falling oil prices and international sanctions. This transition, supported by IMF recommendations, allowed the Russian economy to absorb external shocks better and maintain economic stability. Inflation rates decreased over time, and the economy adjusted to new conditions, highlighting the benefits of adopting a floating currency system​ (IMF)​.

CFA Franc Zone:
In 1994, several countries in the CFA franc zone devalued their currency with IMF support. This devaluation helped improve export competitiveness and led to economic growth in countries like Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The initial fears of high inflation were mitigated, and the countries saw positive growth in GDP per capita, driven by the agricultural sector and improved global economic conditions​ (SpringerLink)​.

These examples demonstrate that while floating and devaluing a currency can present short-term economic challenges, such as inflation and reduced purchasing power, the long-term benefits often include greater economic stability, improved fiscal health, and enhanced competitiveness on the global stage. Successful implementation typically requires a comprehensive approach, including fiscal discipline and structural reforms, to ensure sustainable growth.