It does not require the endowment of clairvoyance to appreciate that the March 2026 National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the swinging fortunes of the perennially delayed Budget 2026, may be representing the ultimate triumphs of the personal ambition of President Bola Tinubu over Nigeria’s national interests. And never so in a remote sense. For like several other areas of national life, the President has never pretended to be moved by the sanctity of the national budget, just as he has rather been more concerned with squeezing the country’s fiscal terrain under the sway of his personal idiosyncrasies. And as the cliche of dictators goes, whoever controls the stomach infrastructure controls the rest of the man. The current National Convention would then serve as the identity parade of the conquered.
For instance, in the political terrain, the opposition has literally crumbled with 31 out of 36 governors, over 70 Senators out of 109, as well as over 230 members of the 360-member House of Representatives now in the All Progressives Congress (APC) his political party. In the context of his successful dominance of also the fiscal terrain, the situation leaves little else outside his acquisition of power over political life and death of Nigerians.
With respect to Tinubu’s dalliance with the fiscal terrain along with his other conquered terrains, is the fact that all the budgets that he had presented in his now three-year old tenure, came late and for the strategic reason of self-aggrandizement as is now becoming manifest. For instance, whereas the nation’s budget law specifies that a president shall present the annual budget for a designated year latest by October of the preceding year, Tinubu had consistently violated this law for reasons that are now clearer as being for political reasons.
Hence for instance, he presented Budget 2026 to the National Assembly on December 18 2025, at a time when the institution should have been on recess. Meanwhile his first full year budget of N27.5 trillion for 2024 was presented to the National Assembly on November 29 2024. The next budget of N47.9 trillion for 2025 was presented on December 8 2025. This trend establishes a diminished commitment of the administration to due process and raises concern for the economic circumstances of Nigerians. More pointedly, this is a development that not only spawned the present state of suspended animation of the Budget 2026 package in the legislative mill. It also marked continuity of a most blatant breach of the country’s budget laws, even as the very National Assembly which Nigerians elected to hold the President in check, is looking the other way.
As if adding insult to injury the APC is holding its mega national convention (March 26-27 2026) at a time when the fiscal future of the country is in abeyance with Budget 2026 still in limbo. At a time that both domestic and international pressures are discomfiting Nigerians with daily escalating prices of essential needs, the body language of the president and his handlers is that of aloofness to the plight of Nigerians, along with fixation on how to secure political power come 2027. By these developments, he is proving to be a president of peculiar concern for Nigerians., as nothing other than his personal interests remain of strategic importance to him.
Ordinarily were he to consider the economic circumstances of Nigerians in the proper context, the passage of the national budget should have enjoyed more attention and an earlier passage as well as assent, than his presently casual disposition, as its role in driving economic growth, managing resources efficiently, and ensuring public accountability cannot be over emphasised.
The global business cycle runs from January to December. Hence by allowing an avoidable delay in budgeting processes, a significant portion of international business is lost for Nigerian business interests. standard of living. The foregoing constitutes the importance of the budget for all Nigerians, regardless of which sector any actor is operating in. It is in this context that the diminished premium placed by the Tinubu administration on the national budget and hence economy as well as welfare of Nigerians remains accentuated. This is regardless of the flowery speeches with which the President regales his fawning acolytes.
Hence as the APC delegates celebrate their converge in solidarity with the President it should not escape their attention that not a few of them would have wished the event took place under more conducive circumstances than presently staged. Also of even more significance is the fact that they have come to consolidate the processes of the incoming one man rule, with potentate as Bola Tinubu.
Welcome to the endorsement by the APC of absolute power and decision-making authority being concentrated in a single individual. This is a far cry from the anticipation of democracy in the Nigerian Constitution.