The National Assembly Joint Committee on Appropriations has asked the Ministry of Finance to withdraw contract circulars issued to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for projects in the 2025 budget.
The lawmakers resolved that the circulars should be suspended until the issuance of the Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE), the official approval that allows agencies to spend public funds within their budget allocations.
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The Committee Chairperson, Olamilekan Adeola (APC, Ogun West), announced the resolution during an interactive session with the federal government’s economic team at the National Assembly on Thursday.
“The capital component of the 2024 budget will continue till December 31st, 2025. Implementation of the capital component of 2025 budget will commence as soon as possible as Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) should be issued within seven days after this session with the economic team. Circulars issued by the Ministry of Finance to the MDAs should be withdrawn pending issuance of AIE,” the senator said while reading resolutions of the committee
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Following the resolutions, committee members and the economic team went into a closed-door meeting.
Those who attend the meeting were the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun; Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu; Accountant-General of the Federation, Samsudeen Ogunjimi; and the Director-General of the Budget Office, Tanimu Yakubu.
Budget overlaps
The 10th National Assembly is operating in an unusual period of overlapping budgets.
In 2024, Nigeria operated three budgets. They are the N21.8 trillion 2023 budget, the N2.17 trillion 2023 supplementary budget, and the N28.7 trillion 2024 budget.
Though the first two were passed by the ninth National Assembly during the administration of the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, President Bola Tinubu extended their capital components first to June and later to December 2024, even as the 2024 budget was already in force.
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The trend continued in 2025, when the capital component of the 2024 budget, which should have ended in December 2024, was extended twice—first to June 2025 and then to December 2025.
As a result, the country is currently running two budgets simultaneously: the extended 2024 budget and the 2025 budget of about N54.2 trillion, which lawmakers raised by N7 billion from the president’s initial proposal.
Both the presidency and the National Assembly have repeatedly defended these extensions as necessary to ensure the completion of ongoing projects.
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