2025 Budget: Tinubu May Not Have Projects To Show For Reelection, Says Enang

Senator Ita Enang, a member of the 7th National Assembly, claimed that President Bola Tinubu might not have any substantial projects to support his reelection in the 2027 electioneering process because of the “low” funding allocated to crucial economic sectors.

“I have read the budget and examined almost every sector,” he said. On the Sunday edition of Channels Television’s socio-political program Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, Enang said, “It is not reflective and it is incapable of giving Mr. President projects to commission that he can be proud of in 2026.”

On December 18, 2024, Tinubu presented the 2025 ₦49.7tn budget proposal before a joint session of the National Assembly for approval. The lawmakers are to resume on February 4, 2025, after the ongoing defense of the proposed budget by ministries, departments, and agencies.

Enang, who served as Senior Special Assistant to then-President Muhammadu Buhari on National Assembly Matters, faulted what he described as low revenue allocation, low revenue generation, and low revenue mobilisation in the 2025 proposed budget.

The chieftain of the president’s party, the ruling All Progressives Congress, said the 2025 Appropriation Bill if passed by the legislature and signed into law by the president with major adjustments, can’t deliver sectoral fulfillment. He said if passed the way it is, it will become a problem for Tinubu’s reelection.

If it is passed in the manner of “the way it is,” “what we are having and defending at the National Assembly,” it will give them a question to answer in the field of campaigns in 2026 and 2027.

They may not have much to show because of the minute allocations that are given to specific projects by specific ministries. They might not be able to commission some of the projects because they may need to leave or abandon because of limited funding, he said.

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He cited the Calabar-Ikot Ekpene, Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Lokoja-Benin, Abuja-Kaduna, and other highway projects, saying the monies allocated for the projects are not substantial enough to get them completed within the budget cycle or calendar.

What will Mr. President commission (if those projects are incomplete) by the end of 2025?

If we have this level of budgeting, we might not have what to show in the majority of the areas that we should campaign. He said, “It’s because of this that the president’s team needs to identify the presidential priorities and go sectorally before passing the budget.”

Enang argued that the president and his economic team should be strategic and set priorities for milestone projects in their budgetary allocations as well as establish work deadlines and tentative commissioning dates.

The lawyer urged the president and his Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, to take up the budget which is still being worked on in the National Assembly, and “look at each of the ministries and say, ‘ Look, this is what we want to deliver in solid minerals, this is what we want to deliver in works, these are two or three things we want to commission in each state, in each region. In the railway industry, we want to achieve this. In terms of water resources, we want to achieve this. This is what we want to report in agriculture. We want to record this milestone in terms of education and work toward it.

The attorney argued that if we don’t do this, the president and the APC will rely on the governors’ projects to support their plans in order to win the next election.

Last December, the National Assembly extended the implementation of the 2024 N28.7tn Budget by six months, saying it has achieved a 50% performance rate in capital expenditure and 48% in recurrent expenditure.

Source: Channels TV