Abstract
Budget is government blueprint that includes projections of expected income and intended expenditures, as well as the schedule of activities done and the means of financing those activities on an annual basis. As a result, budget padding has been envisioned as a type of corruption during budgeting processes. Corruption in Nigeria has deepened so hard that it has infiltrated the process through which budget formulation and approval is made. Budget padding has remained a sharp practice which involves the
inflation of the proposed budget artificially to give room for expansion or cover unexpected cost done either to increase project expenditure or decrease its expected revenue. This sharp practice has remained a reoccurring decimal in Nigeria's budgetary businesses especially during president Buhari's administration in the southeast. Consequently, adopting the theory of Principal Agent Theory, this study interrogates the implications of budget padding on socioeconomic development of Nigeria focusing on
President Buhari's democratic administration. As a qualitative research, a secondary method of data collection as well as content analysis method was used. Thus, the study discovered that budget padding has a very serious negative implication on the socio-economic growth of the country since it has remained a conduit pipe through which public funds are siphoned. The study recommended that a strict law should be made against budget padding as there is presently no law against that in Nigerian constitution. Thereafter, the consequences of law should be applied on the perpetrators without presidential mercies against the defaulters.