The Presidential Air Fleet has received disbursements of at least N4.24 billion between June and December 2025, according to the latest data on GovSpend, a civic technology platform that records and analyses federal government spending.
The disbursements were made into the Presidential Air Fleet naira transit account operated by the Presidential Air Fleets (State House) and recorded in eight separate transactions across three months of June, July and December 2025, with the bulk of the transfers concentrated in July, when four transactions totalling N2.43bn were made in the space of a week, reports The PUNCH.
The transactions showed that 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.
There were 3 additional disbursements in December. These include N9m on December 18, identified in the GovSpend database as “Presidential Air Fleet forex transit funds”, N343.9m on December 30 and N90.9m on December 31.
Four of the eight transactions have no description attached to them, reported simply as “None,” a trend that has been seen in previous disbursements to the transit account.
Most of the disbursements to the Presidential Air Fleet transit account are tagged “Forex Transit Funds” which are usually funds meant for foreign exchange needs to cater for international transactions. This caters for expenditures for operations outside the country including purchase of fuel, maintenance or services in foreign currencies.
The new data contribute to an increasing cumulative spend that has grown dramatically since Tinubu took office.
Operations of the Presidential Air Fleet gulped at least N26.38bn from July 2023 to December 2024 with N14.15bn released in 2024 alone.
The Presidential Air Fleet was granted N17.32bn in the 2025 budget however this was reduced to N14.70bn in 2026.
The reduction was mainly due to lower capital expenditure.
Engine overhaul initiatives across the fleet cost N4.58bn in 2024, N8.65bn in 2025 and N6.05bn in 2026, making the three-year total N19.27bn.
The financial allocations for the fleet have been increasing since 2017 except for 2020, from N4.37bn in 2017 to N20.52bn in 2024, representing a 370 per cent rise in running costs in seven years.
In a conversation with our correspondent, the General Secretary of the Aviation Round Table, Olumide Ohunayo, had attributed the sudden spike to the age of some of the aircraft in the fleet and the dropping value of the naira as well as the “commercial use” of aircraft by the Nigerian Air Force.
For one, this issue of the naira against the dollar will undoubtedly increase over the years, Ohunayo noted.
“We will see more cost coming as the naira continues to depreciate against the dollar. Most of the costs of training crew and engineers and replacement of aircraft parts are all in dollars.
Besides, several of these planes are not new. The older the aircraft, the greater the cost of maintenance and operating.
“Finally, terrorism and insecurity have increased in the last years in Nigeria, which has also affected the cost of aircraft insurance.
In late April 2024, Tinubu had to fly to Saudi Arabia in a private jet after the state-owned Gulfstream 550, which had been allocated to fly him, experienced an unspecified mechanical issue in the Netherlands, leaving him stranded mid-tour.
The occurrence caused the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence to suggest the purchase of two new presidential aircraft.
In August 2024, the service-wide voting resulted in replacing the official Boeing 737 business jet for the President for an Airbus A330 acquired for $100m.
“The ACJ330-200, VP-CAC (MSN 1053), nearly 15 years old, is spacious and equipped with state-of-the-art avionics, customized interior and communication system,” said Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga adding “it will save Nigeria millions of dollars yearly in maintenance and fuel costs.”
The President flew San Marino-registered BBJ (REG: T7-NAS) from February to July 2025.
Sources who spoke to one of our sources stated that the main aircraft had been taken to South Africa to change its colours to represent the office of the President. It was reintroduced in July 2025.
The Presidential Air Fleet has a fixed-wing fleet that includes an Airbus ACJ330-200, a Gulfstream G550, a Gulfstream G500, two Falcon 7Xs, a Hawker 4000 and a Challenger 605 – three of which are reputedly unserviceable.
The fleet of rotor-wings is made up of two Agusta 139 and two Agusta 101 being run by the Nigerian Air Force under the direction of the Office of the National Security Adviser.
John Ojikutu, the chief executive officer of Centurion Security Limited, said all disbursements for the operations of the air fleet were reasonable considering all the expenses involved.
“That’s nothing. If they are going in for maintenance, particularly for C-checks. It’s always in that ballpark.
They’ll fly it abroad, there’s fuel, catering and hotels. Pilots will fly it back. The figure probably includes a lot more than just the direct cost of repairing the aircraft.”
The presidency also did not elaborate on the nature of individual expenditures included in the latest figures.
Calls to the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, were not answered when this report was filed.
Earlier, in an interview with our correspondent, Onanuga had claimed that the cost of maintaining the air fleet was not for the President but for the benefit of Nigeria.
“It is not President Tinubu’s plane, it belongs to the people of Nigeria, it is our property… The President did not buy a new jet, what he has is a refurbished jet, but it is a much newer model than the one President Buhari used.
“Nigerians should try to prioritize the safety of the president, I don’t think anybody wants our president to go and crash in the air.
We want his safety so that he can hand it over to whoever wants to take over from him,” Onanuga said.
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