Naijaonpoint
By June 2026, Government House in Gusau had consumed N1,556,917,643.63 on security gadgets alone. The approved budget for the whole of 2026 gave the purchase of those gadgets N300,000,000. The spending reached 519 percent of the vote in six months, and official spending records examined by SecretsReporters carry no supplementary provision behind it.
The excess over the approved figure is N1,256,917,643.63. The Appropriation Law permits public money to be spent only as the House of Assembly has appropriated it, and a provision raised after the budget has passed requires a supplementary appropriation approved by the House before the money goes out. The Financial Regulations bar an accounting officer from incurring expenditure above an approved provision without that prior approval. The records show the N300,000,000 vote, the N1,556,917,643.63 spent against it, and nothing between the two figures.
The gadgets were bought in a year when the same Government House cluster held a security vote of N3,000,000,000 for 2026 and had spent N1,962,645,760 of it by June, 65.4 percent in half a year. In 2025 the vote was approved at N8,000,000,000 and N3,489,197,500 was spent. The Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs carried a recurrent provision of N603,860,000 in the 2024 budget. In the 2025 budget the same ministry’s recurrent provision stood at N19,288,070,000, thirty two times higher, and the published citizens’ budget does not state what the increase covers.
Across the whole state, the official records put Zamfara’s total spending in 2025 at N254,418,641,795.22. Recurrent spending took N83,552,244,865.88 of it and capital spending took N170,866,396,929.34. The final quarter of 2025 alone accounted for N127,235,476,414.21, half of everything the state spent in the year, against a final budget performance of 51.0 percent.
The offices around the Governor took their own share. The Government House cluster, covering Government House Administration, the Office of the Executive Governor, the Deputy Governor, the Chief of Staff and the attached units, was approved N19,838,112,440 for 2025. The final budget for the cluster closed at N25,183,554,688.61 and the offices spent N14,292,749,381.39. Government House Administration alone was approved N3,019,400,000, had its budget raised inside the year to N9,220,038,634.69, and spent N6,960,030,130.82.
Inside that office, the construction and provision of office buildings carried an original provision of N200,000,000 for 2025. By September, N1,545,366,912.79 had been spent on it, and the revised budget carried it at N2,615,918,022.04. The purchase of office furniture and fittings carried no original provision at all. By September, N405,077,112.71 had been spent on it, and the revised budget carried N1,641,939,099.46. Welfare packages in the same office were approved at N500,000,000, reached N789,574,565 in spending by September, and were revised to N1,450,000,000.
The Office of the Executive Governor voted N500,000,000 for international travel and transport in 2025. By September the office had spent N967,305,974 on it, close to double the provision, and the revision then raised the vote to N1,489,888,000.98. Special days and celebrations in the same office were approved at N550,000,000, reached N709,890,000 in spending by September, and were revised to N850,000,000. The Office of the Chief of Staff entered 2025 with a total budget of N225,050,000 and came out of the revision with N1,163,050,000, five times its approved size, driven by welfare packages revised from N100,000,000 to N580,000,000 and donations revised from N30,000,000 to N350,000,000.
The Office of the Secretary to the State Government was approved N29,038,890,000 for 2025, the final budget rose to N44,966,284,268.36, and the office spent N9,918,854,535.49, which is 22.1 percent. Under its General Services unit, the purchase of relief materials for distribution was approved at N16,260,000,000 for 2026 after N70,323,853.33 had been spent on the item by September 2025.
The audit findings published with the state’s own 2024 accountability report raised 49 audit queries totalling N1,346,605,375, made up of payment vouchers not properly documented of N985,517,126 and outstanding payment vouchers of N379,088,249. The two components add up to N1,364,605,375, which is N18,000,000 more than the total the report states, and the report does not explain the difference.
In the first half of 2026 the records put total state spending at N151,285,226,389.54, with capital spending at N100,738,805,539.49, which is 14.0 percent of the capital budget for the year. The security gadgets at Government House stand in the same records at N1,556,917,643.63 against their N300,000,000 vote.
Source: …Secretsreporters