Salaries, debt service gulp 105% of govt revenue

Debt service and personnel costs have swallowed more than the Federal Government’s total revenue for the first seven months of 2025, even as receipts fell sharply below target and capital projects suffered deep cuts.

An analysis of the 2026–2028 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, released on Wednesday on the website of the Budget Office of the Federation, showed that between January and July, the Federal Government earned N13.67tn as aggregate revenue, compared with a pro rata target of N23.85tn.

That left a revenue gap of N10.19tn, representing a shortfall of about 42.7 per cent. This shortfall occurred amid earlier claims by President Bola Tinubu in September when he said that Nigeria had met its revenue target for 2025 ahead of schedule and would no longer rely on borrowing to fund its budget.

Addressing stakeholders of The Buhari Organisation who visited him at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Tinubu said his administration’s non-oil revenue drive had yielded enough to meet this year’s projections by August, reducing Nigeria’s dependence on external loans

“Today, I can stand here before you to brag: Nigeria is not borrowing. We have met our revenue target for the year, and we met it in August,” Tinubu told the delegation, which included former Nasarawa State Governor, Sen. Tanko Al-Makura, and other chieftains of the ruling All Progressives Congress.

However, the document does not validate this claim by the president, with the MTEF document showing that the revenue crisis was driven largely by a steep drop in oil receipts. Oil revenue for January to July stood at N4.64tn, compared with a pro rata target of N12.25tn, leaving a shortfall of N7.62tn or 62.2 per cent.

The share of dividends from entities such as the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas and development finance institutions also underperformed, yielding only N104.64bn against an expected N428.71bn. By contrast, some non-oil tax heads did better than expected. Company Income Tax collections for the Federal Government were N2.54tn, slightly above the prorated estimate of N2.49tn.