The Federal Government’s Budget Office has published a debt report containing a ₦4.52 trillion calculation error. The institution responsible for presenting Nigeria’s public finances to citizens has compared two different categories of debt and presented the resulting difference as new borrowing.
This is unacceptable.
The error is not a matter of political interpretation. It can be established directly from the government’s own financial records.
In its second quarter 2026 Budget Implementation Report, published on November 7, the Budget Office records Nigeria’s total domestic debt at approximately ₦91.59 trillion as of June 30.
It then compares this figure with approximately ₦82.88 trillion at the end of March and reports that domestic debt increased by approximately ₦8.71 trillion.
But the March figure is not Nigeria’s total domestic debt.
It represents Federal Government domestic debt alone.
The Debt Management Office’s own March 31 records show that Nigeria’s total domestic debt was approximately ₦87.40 trillion. This includes approximately ₦82.88 trillion owed by the Federal Government and another ₦4.52 trillion owed by state governments and the Federal Capital Territory.
By June, total domestic debt stood at approximately ₦91.59 trillion.
The actual increase was therefore approximately ₦4.19 trillion.
The Budget Office overstated the quarterly increase by approximately ₦4.52 trillion because it excluded existing state and Federal Capital Territory debt from the March comparison.
The arithmetic is straightforward.
The institutional failure is what demands an explanation.
How does an official financial report confuse Federal Government debt with total domestic debt?
Who prepared the figures? Which officers reviewed the calculations? Who authorised the publication? Was the report subjected to a proper reconciliation with the Debt Management Office before it was released?
These are not questions that can be dismissed as a minor clerical issue.
Public debt figures influence fiscal planning, borrowing decisions, legislative scrutiny and public understanding of the country’s financial position.
An inaccurate calculation of this magnitude compromises the reliability of the government’s own financial reporting.
There is an additional inconsistency.
The Budget Office records an increase of approximately ₦7.44 trillion in total public debt during the quarter. The Debt Management Office records an increase of approximately ₦3.25 trillion in external debt.
The difference is approximately ₦4.19 trillion, which is consistent with the actual increase in total domestic debt.
Why, then, does the Budget Office publish a domestic debt increase of approximately ₦8.71 trillion?
The Federal Government cannot demand that Nigerians take public debt seriously while failing to ensure that its own published calculations are accurate.
The Budget Office must immediately publish a corrected report and identify the source of the error.
The Director General of the Budget Office must explain the internal review process and establish whether similar calculation errors exist elsewhere in the report.
The Debt Management Office must formally confirm the correct figures.
The National Assembly’s finance and appropriation committees must examine the discrepancy and demand an explanation from the responsible officials.
We are not alleging that ₦4.52 trillion was stolen or that Nigeria’s actual debt stock is understated. The evidence establishes a serious error in the calculation of the quarterly increase.
That distinction does not make the error less important.
Nigerians deserve to know whether their government can produce accurate financial records, particularly when those records concern trillions of naira in public debt.
The people who prepare and approve these reports are entrusted with a responsibility that cannot be treated casually.
Who made this error? Who approved it? Why was it not detected before publication? And when will the government correct the official record?
The Budget Office owes Nigerians more than silence or an explanation that the figures were misunderstood.
It owes them an accurate report, a transparent account of how the failure occurred and evidence that the financial reporting process has been corrected.
Public accountability begins with telling the public the truth about its money.
By Viewers Corner News.