Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior has become the latest federal entity to report receiving zero capital budget allocation for two consecutive fiscal years, highlighting persistent challenges in the country’s budget execution.
Minister of Interior Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo disclosed the allocation during a recent budget defense session before the joint Senate and House of Representatives committees in Abuja. He confirmed that his ministry recorded zero percent capital release for both the 2024 and 2025 budgets, resulting in equally zero performance on capital projects. This situation, he stated, represents a major setback for project implementation and infrastructure development under the ministry’s mandate.
The Interior Ministry now joins a growing list of federal ministries that have complained of inadequate capital funding. Reports indicate that the Ministries of Health, Justice, Power, Transportation, Women Affairs, and Social Development have similarly reported zero or minimal disbursement of their 2025 capital budget allocations. This pattern underscores a broader fiscal constraint affecting capital expenditure across Nigeria’s federal government for the past two years.
Capital budget allocations are specifically designated for long-term development projects, such as infrastructure construction, equipment procurement, and major rehabilitations. Their non-release directly hampers physical development and service delivery capacities within these critical sectors. The consistent zero performance suggests systemic issues in the treasury’s cash management or revenue mobilization, despite the presentation of expansive national budgets.
This revelation comes as the National Assembly prepares to deliberate on the 2026 Appropriation Bill, a N58.18 trillion budget presented by President Bola Tinubu in December 2025. The repeated failure to disburse capital funds raises questions about the feasibility of projected developments in the upcoming financial year and emphasizes the need for structural reforms to ensure budget credibility and effective public investment. The continued cash crunch threatens to delay essential national infrastructure projects and undermine the government’s development agenda.
