Emergency session demands have grown louder inside Nigeria’s National Assembly. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has accused the leadership of both chambers of stalling scrutiny. Their grievance centres on alleged off-budget spending, chronic budget failures and a worsening security crisis.
The lawmakers, under the banner of the Save Nigeria Group, wrote to Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Speaker Tajudeen Abbas on Friday. They urged both men to call an emergency session without delay, according to a statement reported by Premium Times and ThisDay. The sitting, they said, must confront under-implementation of the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Appropriation Acts.
It must also address the unresolved State Police Constitutional Alteration Bill. And it must tackle mounting claims of unrecorded government expenditure.
A startling figure sits at the heart of the emergency session push. The lawmakers cited a July 2026 Article IV Consultation by the International Monetary Fund. Public spending equivalent to roughly two per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product was missing from recent official budgets. That is about ₦8.83 trillion, a figure first flagged in reporting by ThisDay and allAfrica.
That gap, they argued, helps explain the widening mismatch between Nigeria’s declared fiscal deficit and its real financing needs. They insisted the discrepancy cannot be waved away by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Security funding featured just as prominently in the case for an emergency session. Close to the entire ₦20.27 billion budgeted for the Presidential Air Fleet had been released, according to figures reported by Punch. The Nigerian Army, by contrast, received only a fraction of its approved equipment funding. The lawmakers asked why the presidency’s mobility needs were met so reliably while troops fighting terrorists and armed bandits waited for capital releases.
A separate bloc calling itself the Save Democracy Group issued its own statement, titled “Nigeria’s Democracy is Nosediving”, as reported by Tribune Online. It also pressed Akpabio and Abbas to reconvene both chambers over the same cluster of concerns. Led by Rep. Awaji-Inombek Dagomie Abiante, the group said parliament cannot stay on recess while constitutional, fiscal and security questions pile up.
Both groups stopped short of alleging proven wrongdoing. They stressed that any claim of misappropriation must be tested through proper investigation. Still, they pressed for an independent forensic audit of the reported off-budget expenditure to establish the facts.
Public patience with the National Assembly was already thin before this emergency session appeal. Data compiled by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, cited in reporting by The Guardian, tells the story. The tenth Assembly has spent 581 of its first 1,003 days on recess since its June 2023 inauguration. Only 422 of those days involved actual plenary sittings.
In 2025 alone, lawmakers sat for just 141 days. That fell short of the constitutional minimum of 181 by 40 days. The first quarter of 2026 produced only 17 sitting days out of roughly 90.
That record has fed scepticism about how seriously the emergency session demand will be taken. The AdvoKC Foundation, in a statement carried by Punch and TVC News, questioned what lawmakers on record funding were actually doing if not legislating. It made the point after accusing the Assembly of stonewalling a Freedom of Information request for members’ attendance records.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria went further still. It urged President Bola Tinubu to set up an independent judicial commission of inquiry into the alleged off-budget spending. It also called on anti-corruption agencies to begin coordinated forensic investigations.
Many Nigerians have echoed that frustration online. Some have dismissed the emergency session calls as symbolic gestures from an institution better known for lengthy breaks than urgent sittings. Critics point to the Assembly’s own attendance record as their reason to doubt. A chamber so often empty during scheduled plenary is unlikely to suddenly move with speed once reconvened.
Neither Akpabio nor Abbas has publicly confirmed a date for an emergency session. Both chambers remain on their annual recess. Nigerians pressing for accountability over the alleged off-budget spending are left waiting. So are those worried about stalled security funding. Both want to know whether the National Assembly heeds its own members’ call to return early.
