The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu Kurfi, has strongly refuted what he terms "theatrical arithmetic" in the public discourse surrounding the economic policies of the Tinubu administration, widely referred to as Tinubunomics. He argues that widespread outrage over Nigeria's fiscal numbers stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of public finance principles.
Debunking the "Arithmetic Illusion"
In a statement issued to State House Correspondents on Sunday, 4 January 2026, Yakubu asserted that sensational figures circulating in public critiques amount to an "arithmetic illusion" rather than serious economic analysis. He identified a common pattern where critics improperly aggregate unrelated items like tax collections, oil receipts, borrowing, and savings from subsidy removal to create misleadingly large headline numbers.
"Revenue is not the same as cash available to the Federal Government. Borrowing is not income; it is financing that creates future obligations. Federation receipts are not equivalent to what the Federal Government can spend," Yakubu stated emphatically. He explained that ignoring these critical distinctions allows for the creation of dramatic figures—such as N150 trillion, N170 trillion, or N180 trillion—that imply a vast pool of missing money, which never actually existed in a spendable form.
Clarifying Subsidy Reform and Debt Dynamics
Addressing the fuel subsidy reform specifically, the Budget Office chief clarified that the policy does not instantly generate a discretionary cash reserve. Instead, it closes long-standing fiscal leaks that previously manifested through arrears and opaque arrangements. The fiscal benefit, he noted, emerges gradually through reduced deficit pressure and improved budgeting discipline, not as a sudden windfall.
On Nigeria's rising debt profile, Yakubu provided a crucial explanation. He noted that a significant portion of the increase in naira-denominated debt is due to the exchange-rate revaluation of existing external debts, not new borrowing. "When the exchange rate adjusts, the naira value of dollar-denominated debt rises automatically. Treating this accounting effect as fresh borrowing is a category error," he said.
The Path to Meaningful Fiscal Accountability
Yakubu further criticised the misrepresentation of federation-wide revenues as belonging solely to the Federal Government. He stressed that Nigeria's federal system mandates the sharing of revenues among federal, state, and local governments. Therefore, the federal budget is determined by federally retained revenue plus deficit financing, not by gross aggregated inflows.
He concluded that Tinubunomics was conceived as a macro-fiscal reset to tackle structural distortions under difficult constraints, including inherited debt and security challenges. For meaningful accountability, he urged a focus on audit logic: examining federally retained revenue separately from financing, tracking expenditures, and assessing tangible outputs in infrastructure and social services. "Accountability does not begin with social-media arithmetic. It begins with audit logic," Yakubu affirmed.
