It just defined financial year unlike Ghana,” she said.
Adaji cited Ghana and Kenya as examples of countries using statutory timelines for presenting budget documents.
“Ghana portion 179(1) requires presentation of budget file not later than one month in advance of the terminate of the financial year or Kenya, segment 221(1) requiring submission at least two months in advance of the conclude of each financial year,” she added.
Individual rights lawyer Udochukwu Onoh said the repeated extension exposed longstanding problems in Nigeria’s budget approval and implementation procedure.
“Every budget is intended to be expended during the same year. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, it takes us longer to weigh on budget approval and presidential assent,” Onoh said.
He said delays in budget passage and presidential assent had caused implementation to spill into subsequent years.
“Even when it has been passed, the signing by the President takes time to the extent that it has to spill over to the coming year. Every penny should be accounted for,” Onoh said.
Whilst acknowledging that circumstances beyond government’s command could necessitate an extension, he warned that such circumstances should not undermine accountability.
“The extension could be for reasons beyond their regulation, but the cash involved should not advance forward wings and fly; otherwise, there is a serious difficulty and the citizens must stand up to their responsibility to hold power to account,” he said.
Country Administrator of Accountability Lab Nigeria, Friday Odeh, too raised concerns around the implications of the fourth extension for Nigeria’s appropriation framework.
“The fourth extension of the 2025 assets budget destroys the legal sanctity of the Appropriation Act, reducing a statutory law into a transparent administrative concept or political convenience,” Odeh said.
He argued that overlapping spending periods could produce expenditure tracking and legislative oversight greater difficult.
“Operating overlapping spending windows across numerous years creates an unmonitored dual fiscal regime that dismantles expenditure tracking, obscures rollover money, and severely cripples the oversight capacity of the Office of the Auditor Universal for the Federation,” he said.
Odeh furthermore argued that repeated extensions could mask broader weaknesses in sales generation and capital budget implementation.
“Repeated extensions disguise chronic turnover deficits and weak investment absorptive capacity as mere procurement delays,” he said.
He argued that detailed implementation periods could alter government’s financial regulation.
“By continuously stretching execution timelines to conceal unfunded budget lines, the executive branch distorts cash shift method, inflates debt facility costs using delayed borrowing, and triggers inflationary pressures when pent up liquidity is suddenly released into the economy,” Odeh said.
He too criticised the legislature’s role in approving repeated extensions.
“The legislature has abdicated its constitutional power of the purse by granting uninterrupted lifelines instead of enforcing fiscal realism,” he said.
Odeh called for stronger scrutiny of projects covered by the extension.
“Restoring accountability requires an manage project by project audit of expanded items, a strict individual extension cap tied to execution conditions, and the orderly re-appropriation of incomplete capital works into subsequent annual budgets rather than legalizing indefinite extensions,” he said.
NESG Warns Of Fiscal Improvisation
The Nigerian Economic Summit Collection (NESG) said Nigeria’s people support platform is based on annual budgeting and anchored in Chapter V, Component I of the 1999 Constitution.
According to the fixed, the President prepares and presents the Appropriation Bill, although the Appropriation Act authorises expenditure from the Consolidated Earnings Support for a accurate financial year.
It furthermore said the Financial Year Act standardises the financial year from January 1 to December 31.
The NESG said determined delays in budget preparation, passage and implementation had necessitated legislative extensions beyond statutory timelines, raising questions around constitutional validity, fiscal discipline and governance implications.
The category described the development as a pattern of “fiscal improvisation” and said concurrent budgetary operations could weaken legislative oversight and generate blurred audit trails.
It acknowledged that extensions could deter disruptions to fundamental services and enable government to comprehensive delayed projects.
Yet, it warned that frequent rollovers could weaken legislative oversight and produce blurred audit trails.
The NESG moreover said repeated extensions could disincentivise well-timed budgeting and diminish parliamentary regulation over people expenditure.
It argued that extensions diminish parliamentary power over the purse, transforming the legislature from appropriation authority to retrospective validator.
The collection continued warned that normalising repeated extensions could construct a moral obstacle by reducing incentives for opportune budget preparation, passage and implementation.
The Legal Query
At the centre of the controversy is the tie in the middle of Nigeria’s annual budget platform and the power of the Countrywide Assembly to amend an present appropriation.
The Presidency said the current extension is intended to offer MDAs greater time to complete in progress assets projects and make sure that already appropriated resources are put to effort.
The lawyers and civil culture actors, nevertheless, have focused on what the extension means for the constitutional and accountability framework governing people expenditure.
Their concerns include whether expenditure under the prolonged 2025 appropriation can be explicitly distinguished from spending under the 2026 budget, whether unspent money are properly retired and whether overlapping appropriations could complicate the activity of oversight institutions.
Alongside the President’s assent, the 2025 budget will persist in operation before December 31, 2026.
This is a serious challenge and citizens should hold the office holders accountable,” he said.
Onoh furthermore raised concerns concerning the failure to properly retire unspent money and account for expenditure prior to another budget takes result.
“The point that whatever is not expended is not retired is another matter. Even CSOs that should hold power to account are gradually losing their voices,” he said.
He urged government agencies to complete the required retirement and accounting processes.
“If the budget is yet to be implemented, by virtue of the reality that the available one is in utilize, then the agencies should make crucial retirement prior to the subsequent one.
There are legal concerns over President Bola Tinubu’s signing of the law extending the implementation of the 2025 budget from September 30, 2026, to December 31, 2026.
The President assented to the bill on Wednesday, September 30, a day later than the Senate and House of Representatives approved the fourth extension of the 2025 budget.
The Presidency said the extension would provide Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) greater time to overall current finance projects and guarantee that capital already appropriated are fully put to effort excluding disrupting decisive programmes.
Daily Trust had previously reported that lawyers and civil population organisations raised legal and accountability concerns over the repeated extension of the 2025 budget, notably the implications of allowing the appropriation to run alongside the 2026 budget.
The concerns centred on the constitutional requirement for annual budgeting, the tracking of expenditure under overlapping appropriations and the ability of oversight institutions to recognize which budget authorises projects executed during the expanded period.
The newest extension has now moved the consider from whether the 2025 appropriation should be broadened to the legal and accountability implications of keeping it in force although the 2026 budget is already being implemented.
What The Constitution Says
Lawyer Victoria Adaji said the legal implications of the extension should be considered against the provisions of the 1999 Constitution governing Nigeria’s budgeting and financial year.
She referred to Element 81(1), which provides that the President shall cause to be planned and laid prior to each House of the Statewide Assembly, in each financial year, estimates of the revenues and expenditure of the Federation for the “upcoming following financial year.”
Adaji too cited Segment 318 of the Constitution, which defines a financial year as 12 months beginning on January 1 and ending on December 31.
“The legal implications of the Countrywide Assembly extending the 2025 budget’s capital consideration for a fourth time to December 31, 2026, whilst overlapping using a signed 2026 budget and staring down 2027 fiscal discussions, represent a structural breakdown in Nigeria’s people fund orientation,” Adaji said.
She said the overlap could assemble difficulties in tracking people expenditure.
“This poses a tracking nightmare as this violates essential people accounting laws,” she said.
Adaji particularly raised concerns on the ability of the Auditor-Whole of the Federation to choose which appropriation funded projects executed during the expanded period.
“The Auditor-Large of the Federation faces a legal gridlock trying to monitor whether a contract executed in October 2026 was funded by the 2025 extension or the 2026 central allocation,” she said.
According to her, repeated extensions could gradually alter the character of Nigeria’s annual budgeting platform.
“By this four-time extension, Nigeria is effectively transforming its budgetary framework into a rolling three-year cycle managed across ad-hoc amendments, eroding the regulation of law in society finance command,” Adaji said.
She furthermore noted that the Constitution does not furnish a statutory deadline for the presentation of the budget.
“It’s quite unfortunate that our constitution poses no statutory deadline which is the driving force.
