₦218 billion was budgeted for health last year. ₦36 million arrived.

The Nigerian budget is not a plan. It's a press release.

Health Minister Muhammad Pate told the House of Representatives this month that his ministry received ₦36 million of its ₦218 billion 2025 capital allocation. That's 0.016 percent. Not 16 percent. Not 1.6 percent. Less than two kobo per hundred naira appropriated.

In December 2024, Tinubu stood before the National Assembly and said: "We have allocated ₦402 billion for infrastructure investments in the health sector. Our hospitals will be revitalised with medication and better resources, ensuring quality care for all Nigerians."

Then the Office of the Accountant-General ran its "bottom-up cash planning system." The money didn't come.

Quick note on the numbers: the ₦218 billion figure covers the Ministry of Health headquarters specifically, not every health agency under it. The total sector budget was larger. But The Guardian's 10-year data makes the trajectory clear: in 2021, 70 percent of the health capital budget was released. By 2024, it was 15 percent. The direction is getting worse, not better.

The ministry says it wasn't its fault. The cash planning system controls releases. Donor-funded programmes stalled because Nigeria couldn't release counterpart contributions. The ministry was ready. The money just never came.

The Health Sector Reform Coalition held a press conference last Friday to name what this costs. PHC construction stopped. Equipment stayed unprocured. Health technology investments froze. "If ministries cannot rely on capital releases," their chairman said, "long-term projects become impossible." They're calling for the health vote to be ringfenced and released quarterly.

This is the clinic near you that ran short of drugs last year. Not bad luck. Not incompetence at the ward level. Someone in Abuja decided not to release the money, and the people who felt it were the ones who couldn't go somewhere else.

Nigeria's maternal mortality sits at 993 per 100,000. About 27 percent of global maternal deaths happen here. Under-five mortality is 104.9 per 1,000. Less than 40 percent of children aged 12 to 23 months are fully immunised. These aren't statistics about bad luck. They're statistics about chronic underfunding across years and governments.

The 2026 budget proposes ₦2.48 trillion for health, against ₦5.41 trillion for defence. The coalition is asking for 10 percent of the national budget. Nigeria committed to 15 percent at the Abuja Declaration in 2001.

The budget will be announced with confidence. Watch what gets released.