Nigeria’s Presidential Air Fleet Burns N4.24bn In Months – Report
Nigeria’s Presidential Air Fleet received at least N4.24bn in government disbursements between June and December 2025, according to fresh data from GovSpend, a civic technology platform that monitors and analyses federal government expenditure.
The disbursements, tracked across eight separate transactions and paid into the fleet’s naira transit account operated by the Presidential Air Fleet (State House), were heaviest in July 2025, when four transfers totalling N2.43bn were made within a single week.
A transaction-by-transaction breakdown shows N1.285bn was disbursed on June 12; N430m on July 24; N1.28bn on July 25; N92m on July 29; and N626m on July 31. December recorded three additional transfers: N9m on December 18, described as “Presidential Air Fleet forex transit funds”; N343.9m on December 30; and N90.9m on December 31. Four of the eight transactions carry no description, listed simply as “None.”
The new figures compound an already staggering cumulative outlay. At least N26.38bn was spent on the fleet’s operations between July 2023 and December 2024 alone, with N14.15bn disbursed in 2024. The fleet’s total budget allocation stood at N17.32bn in 2025 before declining to N14.70bn in 2026, a reduction driven largely by reduced capital expenditure.
Engine overhaul projects across the fleet consumed N4.58bn in 2024, N8.65bn in 2025, and N6.05bn in 2026 — a three-year aggregate of N19.27bn.
Since 2017, fleet allocations have surged from N4.37bn to N20.52bn in 2024, representing a 370 percent increase over seven years.
The General Secretary of the Aviation Round Table, Olumide Ohunayo, previously attributed the rising costs to ageing aircraft, the naira’s deteriorating value against the dollar, and what he described as the “commercial use” of Air Force aircraft.
“As the naira keeps falling to the dollar, we will see a rise in cost because most of the costs of training crew and engineers and replacing aircraft parts are all in dollars,” Ohunayo was quoted as saying.
In August 2024, the government replaced the official Boeing 737 business jet with an Airbus A330 purchased for $100m. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga defended the acquisition, saying the aircraft “will save Nigeria huge maintenance and fuel costs, running into millions of dollars yearly.”
Onanuga also previously argued that fleet costs serve national, not personal, interests. “It’s not President Tinubu’s plane; it belongs to the people of Nigeria,” he said.
The Presidency did not respond to inquiries regarding the specific disbursements captured in the latest data, and calls to Onanuga went unanswered at the time of this report.