President Bola Tinubu has expressed strong displeasure over a backlog of about 1.5 billion naira owed to federal contractors, a situation he learned about during the Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja on Wednesday.
The President’s reaction was disclosed by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, who briefed State House reporters after the meeting.
Onanuga said the President became upset when he was told that about 2,000 contractors were still being owed. According to him, “He made it very, very clear he is not happy and wants a one stop solution. The DG of the Bureau of Public Procurement actually told the President that about 2000 contractors are being owed money and this made the President very, very upset.”
He explained that the President has now set up a high level committee to identify the problems and arrange how the debts will be cleared. Onanuga said, “So the ministers are going to look into the problem to really find a solution, to find the money to be used in paying the contractors.”
The committee includes the Ministers of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Works, Education, Housing and Marine and Blue Economy, along with the Director General of the Budget Office and the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service.
Onanuga said, “All of them are supposed to sit down, develop a plan as a committee, meet as a committee, and then go to the President to tell him the solution they have found in allocating funds to pay contractors.”
He added that the Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Dr Adebowale Adedokun, had earlier briefed the council on the scale of the unpaid debts. He said the President’s instruction was clear. “The mandate is to find the money and fix the problem of paying contractors.”
Onanuga noted that the President was concerned that despite rising revenue figures, debt to contractors was still piling up. He quoted the President as saying Nigeria could even borrow if needed. According to him, “He even said that, as a sovereign country, we can go and borrow to pay those contractors.”
Contractors have been complaining for months about delayed payments for completed projects. In September, the All Indigenous Contractors Association of Nigeria protested in Abuja, saying more than four trillion naira was owed for certified 2024 capital projects.
The Works Ministry earlier acknowledged the backlog and started a verification exercise in January 2024 to clear about 1.5 trillion naira owed for highway projects.
Nigeria’s overlapping budget cycles have added to the problem, as components of the 2024 capital budget continue to spill into 2025.
