Waziri Adio questions 3,000% jump in RMAFC 2025 budget

Waziri Adio, founder of the policy think tank Agora Policy, has raised concerns over the sharp increase in the 2025 budget of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), which he says is 32 times higher than the commission’s allocation in 2024.

Writing in his ThisDay column on Sunday, Adio noted that RMAFC’s approved budget rose from N3.27 billion in 2024 to N105.14 billion in 2025—a 3,000 percent increase. He also questioned why the budget was revised upward from an initial N5.6 billion to N105.14 billion.

“In what planet would the revised budget of a public institution be about 20 times of its initial budget for the same year?” he wrote. “The original budget of RMAFC for 2025 was as follows: ₦3.6 billion for personnel, ₦1.1 billion for overhead, and ₦916 million for capital.”

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According to him, the commission’s revised estimates showed personnel costs rising by 472% (N3.6bn to N20.6bn), overheads by 709% (N1.1bn to N8.9bn), and capital expenditure by an extraordinary 7,705% (N916m to N71.5bn).

“But more troubling is that the legislators, who in theory are there to provide necessary checks, went along with the cruise,” Adio added. “This goes to illustrate the point that trusting supervisory and oversighting institutions to provide the desired restraint on the super agencies is an unrealistic expectation.”

He pointed out that between 2020 and 2024, RMAFC’s total approved budget was N13.37 billion. The 2025 allocation alone, he stressed, is eight times the cumulative budget for those five years.

Adio argued that even if there was a credible case that the commission was underfunded in the past, a reasonable increase should not have exceeded five-fold.

“This approach probably would have led to a maximum of a five-fold jump in budgetary allocation for the commission, and even with that there would have been legitimate concerns about operational and absorptive capacity,” he said.

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“But they went for the easy option of a revenue earmark, the dream of most government agencies, and RMAFC joyfully ended up with a 2025 budget that is 32 times its approved budget for the preceding year, 2024. What an amazing grace!”

Adio traced the budget surge to three recent developments.

First, he said, the National Economic Council (NEC) in December 2024 approved that RMAFC should receive a fraction of the federation’s non-oil revenue to fund its operations.

“According to Professor Charles Soludo, the governor of Anambra State, who briefed the press on 12th December 2024 about NEC’s decision on this issue, the council noted the onerous responsibilities placed on the commission and its need for alternative and improved funding,” he wrote.

Second, a new law for RMAFC was signed on April 2, 2025, mandating the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) to begin transferring 0.5 percent of non-oil statutory revenue to the agency.

Adio, however, questioned the accuracy of the figure.

“The figure that Soludo kept mentioning was 0.05% of non-oil revenue, which is not exactly the same as 0.5%. Maybe one zero got mixed up somewhere. But it seems the memo that FAAC got was 0.5% of non-oil revenue and that is what it has been applying,” he observed.

Third, on July 22, 2025, the National Assembly approved N105.14 billion as RMAFC’s budget for the year, all of it sourced from the statutory transfer of 0.5% of non-oil revenue.

According to him, the funds were broken down as N37.20 billion for January–June 2025 and N67.94 billion for July–December 2025, with allocations of ₦20.6 billion for personnel, N8.9 billion for overheads, and N71.5 billion for capital expenditure.

Adio said that the revised budget showed RMAFC had succumbed to “the feverish urge to splurge” often seen in government agencies that suddenly gain access to large financial resources.