The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, has faulted what he described as widespread misrepresentation of Nigeria’s public finance under the Tinubunomics framework, warning that much of the criticism circulating in public discourse is built on “arithmetic illusion” rather than sound economic analysis.
In a statement issued by the State House on Sunday titled “Tinubunomics and the Arithmetic of Illusion,” Yakubu said viral claims alleging missing trillions of naira from government coffers stem from a failure to properly distinguish between revenue, cash, and financing, as well as between federation-wide collections and actual federal budgetary resources.
He explained that borrowing is frequently and wrongly presented as income, while federation revenues are often treated as though they belong exclusively to the Federal Government.
According to him, these errors allow critics to manufacture dramatic figures, sometimes ranging from ₦150 trillion to ₦180 trillion and then question how such sums were spent.
Yakubu stressed that revenue available to the Federal Government is not the same as gross collections across the federation, noting that revenues in a federal system are shared, earmarked, and statutorily allocated among the three tiers of government.
“Federal budget reality is determined by retained revenue plus deficit financing, not by gross inflows aggregated for political effect,” he said.
Addressing claims around fuel subsidy removal, the Budget Office DG said subsidy reform does not create a sudden pool of discretionary cash. Rather, it closes long-standing fiscal leaks that previously manifested as arrears, opaque deductions, and quasi-fiscal obligations.
Any fiscal benefit, he added, emerges gradually through reduced deficit pressure and improved budgeting discipline.
He also dismissed interpretations of rising debt figures as evidence of reckless borrowing, explaining that a large part of the increase in naira-denominated debt reflects exchange-rate revaluation of existing external obligations, not new loans.
Yakubu said Tinubunomics was never presented as a promise of instant prosperity, but as a structural macro-fiscal reset aimed at restoring price signals, strengthening revenue administration, rebuilding investor confidence, and protecting the most vulnerable within the limits of inherited debt, security spending, and constitutional obligations.
He urged Nigerians to interrogate government performance using proper fiscal tools by examining retained revenue, separating it clearly from financing, tracking expenditure, and assessing measurable outputs such as infrastructure, power supply, transport, education, and healthcare.
“Accountability does not begin with social media addiction,” Yakubu said. “It starts with audit logic. Anything else is theatre, and no amount of theatrical arithmetic can substitute for fiscal discipline.”
Editor: Ebuwa Omo-Osagie
