Meet the new DG of budget office Tanimu Yakubu

President Bola Tinubu approved the appointment of Tanimu Yakubu as the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation on June 13th, 2024.

He was born in Kurfi, Katsina State, on Sunday the 30th of April, 1961.

Mr. Yabuku is an accomplished economist and was Chief Economic Adviser to a former President from 2007 to 2010; Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria from 2003 to 2007, and Commissioner of Finance, Budget, and Economic Planning in Katsina State from 1999 to 2003.

He holds a Master of Business Administration degree in Finance from Wagner College, Staten Island, New York, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the same institution.

Tanimu Yakubu was appointed as a non-executive director of Oando PLC effective the 30th of June, 2015.

Prior to his appointment he has held key positions in both the private and public sectors in Nigeria.

One of the his most notable positions was as Chief Economic Adviser to the President, Commander in Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’adua, during which time he also served as the Deputy Chief of Staff and as a member of the National Economic Management team from 2007 to 2010.

Tanimu Yakubu, in his capacity as the Chief Economic Adviser to President Yar’adua, crafted the policies and recommendations that persuaded the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to set up Nigeria’s first Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), and was among 6 key FGN officials that worked behind the scenes to end the Niger Delta crisis that led to the dramatical boost of the country’s crude output by 900,000bpd.

Another notable prior public service engagement was his appointment as the Honourable Commissioner, Ministry of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Katsina State from 1999 to 2002.

Under Tanimu Yakubu, Katsina State adopted a legislation that resulted in it having the highest capital to recurrent expenditure ratio, of not less than 70%, of all the states in the Federal Republic.

Tanimu Yakubu was also Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Mortgage Bank from 2003 – 2007. While he was CEO, he engineered the first mortgage-backed securitization in Sub Saharan Africa.

Tanimu Yakubu has worked in a number of private-sector institutions, including Icon Limited (Merchant Bankers) where he worked in both the Investment Bank’s Research and Development Department, as well as in its Capital Issues and Investment Division covering Financial Advisory and at Afri-Projects Consortium (APC) where he was the Chief Economist and Principal Investment Adviser.

Tanimu Yakubu was the founding president of the 41-year-old National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics (1984) and MBA Finance (1986) in Wagner College, Staten Island, New York, USA, following his expulsion from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria where he had enrolled as an undergraduate accounting student.

Tanimu Yakubu passed the Fiduciary Awareness Certification Test (FACT) of the Corporate Governance Rating System (CGRS) on the 3rd of June, 2019. 

He has served on and chaired virtually all the statutory board committees in addition to membership of a legion non statutory committees.  In a little over one year, Tanimu has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors of New Nigeria Development Company Limited, a regional commercial conglomerate owned by the 19 state governments in Northern Nigeria.  In this position, he is the Chief Adviser to Northern Nigeria.