The Senate through its Committee on Finance has given Wale Edun, the minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, and Atiku Bagudu, the minister of budget and national planning, two weeks to submit a detailed report on the performance of the 2024 budget.
The directive was issued on Thursday after an extensive meeting between the committee, Edun, Samsudeen Ogunjimi, the Accountant General of the Federation and Tanimu Yakubu, Director – General of the Budget Office.
The session focused on assessing fiscal policies, reviewing budget implementation, and setting a framework for the 2025 and 2026–2029 fiscal years.
Sani Musa, the chairman, senate committee on finance, who spoke after the closed-door session, said the lawmakers agreed that while some progress had been made, the ministries must provide documented evidence of the 2024 budget performance before discussions on the 2026–2029 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) can begin.
“We have agreed that we are making progress, but we need to make more progress,” Musa stated.
“We will want documented evidence of the performance of 2024 and our expectations for the 2025 budget before we start talking about the MTEF for 2026.
“The Honourable Minister of Finance has agreed to oblige us with that report, and we will reconvene on October 23 to review the documents.”
The senator added that the committee would study the report thoroughly to evaluate how fiscal policies were working in line with the government’s economic recovery plans.
“If the budget works very well, the economy will work well, and there will be food on the table of Nigerians,” he said.
Earlier, Edun, told lawmakers that the economy was beginning to stabilise despite earlier distortions.
He said inflation was slowing, and growth was picking up across several sectors.
“In the second quarter of 2025, the economy grew at 4.23%.
“When you disaggregate that growth, the job-creating industrial sector grew by over 7%, specifically 7.45%,” Edun noted.
The finance minister further added, “That is significant because it doubles the population growth rate and helps generate income to lift people out of poverty.
“Our focus remains on sustaining broad-based growth across all 46 sectors of the economy.”
He further assured that the federal government was maintaining “relatively high levels of performance” under the 2024 and 2025 budgets, especially on capital expenditure, and committed to ending the “culture of budget overruns and repeated extensions.”
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On his part, Yakubu, acknowledged that 2024 had been a turbulent fiscal year, as many of the underlying assumptions for the budget did not hold.
“Oil revenue, assumed at $75 per barrel, fell short by between $10 and $15 due to global price fluctuations,” he explained.
“Inflation rose beyond projections, affecting borrowing costs and debt service performance, which significantly exceeded targets.”
He also pointed out that the fiscal implications of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2022 had deepened challenges, with 30% of gross oil revenue and oil profits retained for upstream operations and the government absorbing NNPC’s operating costs.
“This has reduced the Federation Account allocation by nearly 70% of what used to accrue,” he said, adding that crude oil output also remained below projections in the MTEF approved by the National Assembly.
