President Tinubu presents N58.46trn 2026 budget to National Assembly members

President Bola Tinubu on Friday, December19, presented the 2026 Appropriation Bill of N58.18 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly.  During the presentation, the President tagged the appropriation bill as Budget of Consolidation, Renewed Resilience and Shared Prosperity. President Tinubu said that the budget was a culmination of two-and-a-half years of painful but necessary reforms aimed at steering Nigeria towards macro-economic stability, jobrich growth and inclusive prosperity.  Key highlights of the 2026 appropriation bill, according to the President include total revenue of N34.33trillion and total expenditure of N58.18trillion, including N15.52trillion for debt servicing. While the recurrent nondebt expenditure was pegged at N15.25trillion, capital expenditure was N26.08trillion and deficit, N23.85trillion, at 4.28 per cent of GDP rate.  The President said that the budget was anchored on four pillars of consolidating macro-economic stability, improving the business and investment climate, promoting jobrich growth and poverty reduction, and strengthening human capital, while protecting vulnerable groups. According to him , sectoral allocations have Defence and Security at N5.41 trillion; Infrastructure, N3.56 trillion; Education N3.52 trillion and Health N2.48 trillion.  The President emphasised that security remained the bedrock of development, saying that the N5.41 trillion allocation was key to modernising the armed forces, enhancing intelligencedriven policing and securing the nations borders. He said that the Nigerian Education Loan Fund had supported more than 418,000 students across 229 tertiary institutions, while health spending accounts for six per cent of the total budget net of liabilities.  The President noted that encouraging signs of stabilisation such as GDP growth of 3.98 per cent in third quarter of 2025 from 3.86 per cent in third quarter of 2024 have been experienced. He also said that inflation fell to 14.45 per cent in November from 24.23 per cent in March, while external reserves reached a sevenyear high of about 47billion dollars.  To sustain the gains, he said that the budget would target a crude oil benchmark of 64.85 dollar per barrel, production of 1.84million barrels per day and an exchange rate of N1,400 to the US dollar for 2026. President Tinubu, who stressed the need for discipline in budget execution, directed ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to adhere strictly to appropriated timelines and deploy endtoend digitisation of revenue mobilisation to curb leakages.  He also called for better revenue mobilisation through new National Tax Acts and reforms in the oil and gas sector, alongside stringent performance targets for government-owned enterprises. He said that the budget introduced a new national counterterrorism doctrine which reclassified bandits, militias, armed gangs and other nonstate armed groups as terrorists.  The doctrine mandates unified command, intelligencesharing and communitybased peace building to combat violence that threatens national survival, he said. The President called for unity between the executive and the legislature to deliver full promise of his administrations Renewed Hope Agenda, reiterating that the 2026 budget was not merely a list of numbers but a statement of national priorities.The post President Tinubu presents N58.46trn 2026 budget to National Assembly members appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.