The IMF Says Nigeria Hid N8.83 Trillion in Public Spending. Peter Obi Says It Is the Lagos Playbook at National Scale. The Government Has Started Fixing It Quietly.

The IMF Says Nigeria Hid N8.83 Trillion in Public Spending. Peter Obi Says It Is the Lagos Playbook at National Scale. The Government Has Started Fixing It Quietly.

On July 1, 2026, Reuters published a report that has since set Nigerian political and financial circles alight.

Christian Ebeke, the IMF's resident representative in Nigeria, told a meeting with business executives in Lagos that Nigeria had about 2% of GDP worth of public spending not recorded in recent official budgets, creating a gap between its reported deficit and actual financing needs.

"So far we think that there are about 2% of GDP of expenditure that were not reported that should be reported and should be recorded, so that this statistical discrepancy will disappear," Ebeke said.

With Nigeria's economy valued at approximately N441.5 trillion, the IMF's finding implies that roughly N8.83 trillion worth of public expenditure may have gone unrecorded in official budget documents, potentially masking the government's true borrowing requirements.

The IMF's own Article IV consultation report, published separately and sourced directly, puts the figure even higher. The IMF Article IV document states that a statistical discrepancy of 2.7 percent of GDP could reflect spending not captured by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

At 2.7% of GDP, the unrecorded figure is closer to N11.9 trillion.

The question of what happened to it, who authorised it, and what it was spent on is now one of the most politically charged conversations in Nigeria.

What the IMF Actually Said: The Full Picture

Before turning to the political reactions, the IMF's actual position deserves to be stated in full, because it is more nuanced than either the government's defenders or its most aggressive critics have presented.

Ebeke's comments follow the latest IMF Article IV consultation on Nigeria, which commended the federal government for its recent macroeconomic reforms. The fund acknowledged that these measures have strengthened economic stability and bolstered investor confidence. However, the IMF warned that the benefits of these reforms have not yet translated into broad-based improvements in living standards.

Ebeke said the discrepancy means Nigeria's fiscal deficit appears smaller than the government's actual borrowing needs because some capital expenditure was excluded from budget documents and implementation reports. He said the unreported spending was linked, in part, to large government projects executed off-budget.

The IMF described the spending as primarily related to capital projects, meaning infrastructure and large public works, executed outside the official budget perimeter rather than through it.

Critically, Ebeke said Nigerian authorities have started addressing the issue by repealing and revising recent budget laws to incorporate previously unrecorded expenditure, though updated budget implementation reports are still required.

The IMF's own Article IV report confirms this. The January 2026 Repeal and Re-enactment Bills for the 2024 and 2025 budgets incorporated, ex post, some expenditures that had been executed outside the budget perimeter.

In plain language: the government had already taken legislative steps before the IMF's public disclosure to bring the off-budget spending onto the official record, passing new laws in January 2026 to retroactively incorporate the previously unrecorded expenditures.

The IMF also cautioned Nigeria over its plan to raise up to $5 billion through a derivatives-based financing arrangement with First Abu Dhabi Bank, warning that such transactions are often complex and lack transparency.

The IMF official emphasised that improving fiscal transparency is essential. He warned that off-budget spending raises significant concerns regarding procurement processes, accountability, and oversight.

The IMF's position, in summary, is: the reforms are working on the macro level, the off-budget spending is a real transparency problem that must be fixed, and the government has begun that fixing process, but must go further.

What the Government Has Done

The government has not publicly addressed the IMF's July 1 disclosure with a formal press conference or ministerial statement as of the time of publication.

What is on the public record, however, is significant. The January 2026 Repeal and Re-enactment Bills passed through the National Assembly and were signed into law specifically to incorporate previously off-budget spending into the official fiscal record. This happened months before the IMF's public disclosure. The government did not wait for the Reuters story to begin the process of bringing the unrecorded expenditures into official accounts.

The 2026 budget also envisages bringing on-budget priority projects that were previously executed outside the budget perimeter.

Whether the process of correction is moving fast enough, transparently enough, and with sufficient public disclosure of what was spent, where, and by whose authorisation, is the question the IMF itself has said remains unresolved.

The Presidency and the Finance Ministry had not issued a specific public response to the IMF's July 1 statement as of the time of publication.

What Peter Obi Said

Former presidential candidate and NDC standard-bearer Peter Obi released a detailed statement responding to the IMF's findings. The statement, signed with the initials "AA," runs to several thousand words and represents one of the most comprehensive opposition responses to a fiscal controversy in recent Nigerian political history.

Obi's central argument is that the off-budget spending is not a technical accounting anomaly but a deliberate governing philosophy, one he traces to Tinubu's tenure as Lagos State Governor.

In his statement, Obi wrote: "What the IMF has now documented at the federal level is that same Lagos playbook, replicated at national scale and with national consequences. The man who perfected the art of the off-budget economy in Lagos has brought that 'Beta' form to Abuja, and the price is being paid by 220 million Nigerians."

He connected the IMF finding to two additional controversies: the N800 billion he alleged had been unlawfully deducted from state governments' statutory allocations without National Assembly authorisation, and the N1.3 billion inserted into the 2026 Federal Budget for what the government acknowledged was a non-existent agency, the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.

On the economic consequences, Obi wrote: "The interest rates crushing Nigerian businesses, the weak Naira destroying Nigerian savings, and the economic stagnation hollowing out Nigerian households are not the unavoidable consequences of global headwinds. They are, at least in part, the direct result of a government that has removed from the productive economy N8.8 trillion that should have been transparently appropriated."

He referenced his own 2023 presidential campaign proposal for a $10 billion economic stimulus, which critics described as unrealistic, and said the IMF's findings had answered the question of where the resources would come from. "N8.8 trillion, the equivalent of approximately $5.5 billion at current exchange rates, was available. It was not unavailable. It was not non-existent. It was simply being spent in the dark."

Obi issued six specific demands: emergency National Assembly investigative hearings, a full independent audit by the Auditor-General, public disclosure of every naira spent off-budget, the restoration of the N800 billion to state governments, formal EFCC and ICPC investigations, and a response from civil society and international institutions.

The Key Distinction the Story Requires

This is the point where responsible journalism requires the clearest possible separation between what is established, what is alleged, and what remains contested.

What is established by the IMF's own words and its Article IV report: Nigeria had approximately 2% to 2.7% of GDP in public spending that was not recorded in official budget documents in recent years. The IMF resident representative described this as primarily related to large capital projects executed off-budget. The government began corrective legislative action in January 2026, months before the public disclosure.

What is alleged by Peter Obi and the opposition: That the off-budget spending represents deliberate concealment rather than administrative failure. That it is connected to a N800 billion unlawful deduction from state allocations. That it is being assembled as a political war chest for 2027. That it mirrors a pattern from Tinubu's Lagos governance.

What remains unestablished: Whether the off-budget spending was motivated by deliberate concealment or by the institutional weaknesses of Nigeria's public financial management system. Whether the January 2026 legislative corrections were sufficient. Where specifically the N8.83 trillion was spent and who authorised each transaction. Whether the N800 billion deduction from state allocations is legally or factually as Obi describes.

The distinction matters because the IMF's findings, serious as they are, describe a fiscal transparency problem. Peter Obi's statement describes a criminal conspiracy. Both cannot be evaluated using the same evidentiary standard.

The IMF's Own Warning, in Its Own Words

The IMF official stressed that improving fiscal transparency is essential, warning that off-budget spending raises concerns about procurement processes, accountability and oversight.

Incomplete fiscal reporting also complicates coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities because policymakers may not have a full picture of the government's true financing requirements.

The IMF warned that the benefits of the reforms had yet to translate into broad-based improvements in living standards.

And from the Article IV consultation document itself: Sufficient allocations for the cash transfer system are needed considering the expected deterioration of poverty and food insecurity.

The IMF's concern is not theoretical. It is about the gap between macroeconomic stabilisation on paper and the lived experience of Nigerians on the ground, a gap that off-budget spending makes wider and harder to address.

What Nigerians Are Entitled to Demand

Regardless of the political motivations of those raising the alarm, the substance of the IMF's finding is not in dispute. N8.83 trillion in public expenditure was not recorded in Nigeria's official budget documents. That money came from Nigerian taxpayers. It was spent on projects that have not been publicly accounted for in the standard statutory framework. The Auditor-General was not able to audit it in real time because it was outside the official budget perimeter.

The government's corrective legislative steps in January 2026 are a beginning, not a conclusion. Updated budget implementation reports are still required to fully reflect the corrections. The public has not been told what was spent, where, and by whose authorisation.

The National Assembly's oversight role exists precisely for moments like this. The Auditor-General's mandate was designed for exactly this kind of gap. The question the IMF has placed before Nigeria's democratic institutions is whether those institutions will exercise their powers, or whether the retroactive incorporation of off-budget spending into revised budget laws will be accepted as accountability sufficient.

That is not a question the IMF can answer. It is one Nigeria must answer for itself.