While Nigeria Loses Military Brass To Terror Attacks, Tinubu Raises Funds To Rehabilitate ‘Repentant’ Militants From ₦50bn To ₦115bn
The Bola Tinubu government has proposed ₦115 billion for the Presidential Amnesty Programme in the 2026 Appropriation Bill to support the reintegration of former militants.
This represents a 76.9 per cent jump from the N65bn earmarked for both 2024 and 2025, budget documents.
The new allocation is contained in the 2026 Appropriation Bill approved by the National Assembly, detailed in the House of Representatives Order Paper dated Tuesday, March 31, 2026, and in the budget schedule attached to the proposal.
The sum, domiciled under recurrent (non-debt) expenditure in the 2026 budget schedule, was retained intact by the House when it passed the Bill, indicating that the legislature did not object to the increase.
A comparison of appropriation documents across three fiscal years reveals that the programme’s allocation was held at N65bn in 2024 and again in 2025, a flat line for two consecutive years, before surging by N50bn in the current budget cycle.
The 2026 figure is the highest single-year allocation to the programme since 2017, when it received a flat allocation of N65bn. So far, the programme has received at least N700bn in the past decade alone.
Records indicate the programme maintained a flat ₦65 billion allocation for two consecutive years before the ₦50 billion increase in 2026, making it the highest yearly funding since 2017.
The Presidential Amnesty Programme, under the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on the Niger Delta, was introduced in 2009 to address militancy in the Niger Delta through disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
Since its creation, the programme has received an estimated ₦700 billion in funding over the past decade.
The development comes at a time when Nigeria continues to lose its military brass to repeated terrorist attacks across the country, raising fresh concerns over the worsening security situation and the effectiveness of ongoing counterinsurgency operations.
