4 hours ago
1
Angry protesters under the umbrella of the National Vanguard for Accountable and Transparent Democracy, NVATD, on Tuesday stormed the National Assembly, Abuja, accusing top finance officials of grounding the Nigerian economy through the alleged deliberate sabotage of the 2025 budget.
The protesters specifically accused the Minister of Finance, Mr. Wale Edun, the Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite, and the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGoF), Mr. Shamsedeen Babatunde Ogunjimi, of frustrating budget implementation and crippling key sectors, including health, education, and infrastructure.
He linked the protest to the recent public lamentation by the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, who disclosed that only N36 million was released to the ministry out of over N200 billion appropriated for public health in the 2025 budget.
Recall that Prof. Ali Pate, while appearing before the House Committee on Healthcare Services on Monday, attributed the poor performance of the 2025 health budget to cash flow constraints and systemic bottlenecks in the Federal Government’s budget execution process, particularly within the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
Addressing journalists during the protest, the Secretary-General of NVATD, Harry Linus, said the refusal to release funds for capital projects captured in the 2024 Appropriation Act had stalled government activities and directly contributed to the widespread non-performance of the 2025 budget.
“They have grounded Nigeria. Contractors executed projects under the 2024 budget, many of them using bank loans, and those projects were commissioned by the government. Yet the contractors have not been paid. As a result, nothing moved in 2025,” Linus said.
According to Linus, the situation had left hospitals without drugs, forced medical personnel into industrial actions, and weakened public institutions across the country.
He said the failure to fund capital projects had also stalled new contracts under the 2025 appropriation, grounding economic activities and deepening hardship for Nigerians.
The protesters warned that unless the anomalies were urgently addressed, confidence in the 2026 Appropriation Bill currently before the National Assembly would remain low.
NVATD called on lawmakers to ensure strict oversight of budget implementation and to withhold approvals for agencies that failed to perform in the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, except in critical sectors such as health, education, and security.
‘They have grounded Nigeria’ — Protesters storm National Assembly over 2025 budget failure
