Trillions Counted as Revenue for FG Mere “Arithmetic Illusions,” says Tanimu Yakubu, Tinubu’s Budget Czar

By Jeremy Fregene

The Federal Government has pushed back forcefully against a wave of viral claims alleging massive revenue inflows under President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, describing the figures being circulated as a product of what it called “arithmetic illusion” rather than serious fiscal analysis.

In a detailed intervention released by the Special Adviser, Information and Strategy to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation,Tanimu Yakubu, warned that much of the public outrage surrounding so-called “trillions” is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of public finance, particularly the difference between revenue, cash, and borrowing.

Yakubu said the repeated aggregation of unrelated figures such as tax collections, oil receipts, customs duties, borrowing, and so-called fuel subsidy savings into headline totals of ₦150 trillion, ₦170 trillion, or even ₦180 trillion amounts to misleading the public.

“This is not an economic analysis,” the Budget Office DG stated. “It is an arithmetic illusion.”

According to him, most critiques of Tinubunomics collapse because they fail to distinguish between federation-wide collections and what the Federal Government actually retains and can spend, as well as between income and financing.

“Borrowing is not income; it is financing and creates future obligations,” Yakubu said. “Federation receipts are not the same thing as federal budgetary resources.”

He explained that many figures being circulated online double-count revenues by adding oil receipts to tax collections without clarifying whether they are gross or net, federally retained, or shared among the three tiers of government. In some cases, customs receipts are added separately despite already being embedded in non-oil revenue totals.

Most controversially, Yakubu said borrowing is routinely presented as though it were free cash, while fuel subsidy removal is portrayed as having generated a large stockpile of idle funds.

“Stopping a leak does not create a vault of cash,” he noted, explaining that subsidy reform first eliminates opaque fiscal drains that previously showed up as arrears, netting arrangements, and quasi-fiscal obligations. Any fiscal benefit, he said, emerges gradually through reduced deficit pressure and improved budget discipline and not from instant windfalls.

On debt profile, Yakubu said much of the increase in Nigeria’s debt stock, when measured in naira, reflects exchange-rate revaluation of existing dollar-denominated obligations rather than fresh borrowing.

“When the exchange rate adjusts, the naira value of external debt rises automatically,” he said, warning that treating this accounting effect as new borrowing is “a category error.”

The Budget Office also faulted the persistent presentation of federation revenues as if they belong solely to the Federal Government, stressing that Nigeria’s revenues are constitutionally shared, earmarked, and statutorily allocated.

“Federal budget reality is determined by FGN retained revenue plus deficit financing, not by gross federation inflows aggregated for political effect,” Yakubu said.

Defending the Tinubu administration’s economic reforms, he said Tinubunomics was never sold as a promise of instant abundance but as a macro-fiscal reset undertaken under severe constraints, including inherited debt service obligations, security spending pressures, legacy arrears, and constitutional transfers.

Its core logic, he said, lies in restoring price signals, strengthening revenue administration, rebuilding investor credibility, and re-pricing the public balance sheet, while providing targeted protection for the most vulnerable.

He urged critics and analysts to focus instead on federal retained revenue, clearly separate it from financing, track expenditure across debt service, personnel, capital, and transfers, and then assess concrete outputs such as infrastructure delivery, power supply, rail expansion, and social services.