Senator Ita Enang, a lawmaker in the 7th National Assembly, stated that the modest allocations to key sectors of the economy could leave President Bola Tinubu with little to show for his reelection campaign in 2027.
“I have read the budget and have gone through almost all the sectors. It is not reflective and it is incapable of giving Mr President projects to commission which he can be proud of in 2026,” Enang said on the Sunday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
On December 18, 2024, President Tinubu presented the ₦49.7 trillion 2025 budget proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly for approval. Lawmakers are set to reconvene on February 4, 2025, after ministries, departments, and agencies finish defending the proposed budget.
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Enang, who previously served as Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on National Assembly Matters, criticized what he called inadequate revenue allocation, low revenue generation, and poor revenue mobilization in the 2025 budget proposal.
The senior member of the ruling All Progressives Congress argued that if the 2025 Appropriation Bill is passed with only minor changes, it won’t meet the needs of key sectors.
He warned that, if approved in its current form, it could pose a challenge to Tinubu’s chances for reelection.
“The way it is, what we are having and defending at the National Assembly, if it is passed like that, it will give them a question to answer in the field of campaigns in 2026, 2027.
“I am saying that because of the minute allocations given to certain projects in certain ministries, they may not have much to show. Given the way some of the projects which they may need to exit or abandon due to low allocation, they may not be able to commission those projects,” he said.
He pointed to projects like the Calabar-Ikot Ekpene, Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Lokoja-Benin, and Abuja-Kaduna highways, noting that the funds allocated for these initiatives are insufficient to complete them within the current budget cycle or timeframe.
“By the end of 2025, Mr president is supposed to go commission those projects but what will he commission (if they are uncompleted)?
“In most areas that we should show during the campaigns, we may not have what to show if we have this level of budgeting. That is why I am saying that Mr president’s team should go sectorally before they pass the budget and identify the presidential priorities,” he said.
Enang advised the president and his economic team to adopt a strategic approach by prioritizing key projects in their budget allocations, while also setting deadlines and proposed commissioning dates for these projects.
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. This is what we want to attain in railway. This is what we want to attain in water resources. This is what we want to report in agriculture. This is the milestone we want to record in education and then work towards that’.”
“If we don’t do this, the president and the APC will be relying on the projects of states and governors to justify what they have done for APC to go for the next election,” the lawyer said.
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