A SecretsReporters review of the official payment records of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency shows N851,202,038.12 paid out to named individuals and to the agency’s two internal units in 85 separate payments between November 2023 and May 2026, under Engr. Chukwuemeka Agbasi, the Managing Director. It was a parallel run of allowances, refunds, onward disbursements and financial assistance that moved outside the agency’s salary system, through hands rather than contracts.
The names on the receiving end included the Managing Director himself. They included board members whose allowances reached them through the personal receipt of a single staff conduit. They included the agency’s two union chairmen, handed millions in cash for Workers Day celebrations. And they included three travellers who were refunded, three years running, for attending United Nations climate change conferences in Dubai, in Baku, and at the thirtieth session of the same conference.
The Managing Director’s own refunds
The payment records carry the Managing Director as “AGBASI CHIJIOKE EMEKA CHUKWUEMEKA”. In that name he received N32,268,418.00 in three payments. On December 24, 2024, he was paid N14,860,000.00 as a refund of out-of-pocket expenses for air tickets, estacode and more, for the Japan Build-Tokyo international building and home week at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan and the Korea Build Week that followed in February 2025. On December 30, 2023, he was paid N10,176,018.00 as daily travel allowance, estacode and air ticket to visit the German federal highway institute, BASt, to meet and interact with experts on the analysis and development of pavement structures. On December 17, 2025, he was paid N7,232,400.00 as estacode allowance and warm clothing allowance for a China-Africa economic and trade promotion delegation.
The same China-Africa trip put money for the Managing Director’s travel through another man’s name as well. On December 17, 2025, the agency refunded N22,619,740.00 to Jaafaru Danlami for flight tickets for Agbasi Emeka and two others on that delegation. On September 9, 2025, it refunded N8,125,226.00 to the same Jaafaru Danlami for onward disbursement to two travellers, one of them Agbasi, to Monrovia in Liberia for an international conference on sustainable transport in Africa.
There is nothing inherently improper in refunding a chief executive’s official travel. But the Financial Regulations treat personal advances and out-of-pocket refunds as transactions requiring full retirement with receipts, and the pattern here, public money reimbursing the man who approves the spending, is precisely why the regulations demand independent retirement of every kobo.
The climate conference circuit
The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency maintains roads. Across three successive years its payment records show it funding attendance at the United Nations climate change conferences, and refunding the same travellers each time. For COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, held from November 30 to December 12, 2023, the agency paid refunds of out-of-pocket expenses on March 15, 2024: N6,670,100.00 to Dikeocha Nkiruka Ifunanya, and N6,142,100.00 each to Ahmad Hamza Habiba and Umar Suleiman Halirat, for air ticket and estacode. For COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, held from November 11 to 22, 2024, it paid again on December 31, 2024: N10,804,000.00 to Dikeocha, and N10,184,480.00 each to Ahmad and Umar. For the thirtieth session of the conference, COP30, it paid on May 12, 2026: N13,690,000.00 to Dikeocha and N12,898,000.00 to Ahmad, for return ticket, estacode and airport taxi. What a federal road maintenance agency contributed to global climate negotiations, and why its people needed to be there in person three years running, the records do not explain.
The conduit
Agwubuo Nneoma Obianuju received N57,450,000.00 across nine payments, eight of them described in the records as onward delivery or onward disbursement. She was the channel through which board money flowed. On May 11, 2024, she received N8,400,000.00 for onward delivery to Alhaji A. Adamu and three others, their duty travel allowance for a road monitoring exercise. The same day she received N6,300,000.00, payment for a senator and two others for accommodation and the monitoring of roads by the agency’s 6th Governing Board. On December 30, 2024, she received N5,775,000.00 for onward delivery to Alhaji Yusuf Lawal Othman and eight other board members for a meeting of the governing board. On April 19, 2025, she received N5,175,000.00 for onward delivery to a senator and eight other board members, for accommodation, sitting allowance and transport. On August 18, 2025, she received N8,000,000.00 for onward disbursement to Dr K. Ugbala and seven other board members for monitoring, appraisal and value-for-money inspection. On August 29, 2025, she received a second N5,775,000.00 for onward delivery to Dr Ugbala and eight others. On December 24, 2025, she received N6,025,000.00 and N5,250,000.00, both for onward delivery to Dr Musa Babayo, who had been inaugurated chairman of the governing board the month before, and nine other board members. On December 29, 2025, she received N6,750,000.00 for onward disbursement to CM Shehu Mohammed and nine others.
She was not the only channel. On August 18, 2025, three more payees, Oluwole Dada Agbeke Ibukunolu, Omoruan Omoizee Amina and Chukwu Ifechi Cyprian, each received exactly N5,000,000.00 for onward disbursement to different groups of board members. Routing board members’ sitting and transport allowances through personal receipts is a textbook red flag under the Financial Regulations: public funds paid to individuals as conduits must be retired with the beneficiaries’ acknowledgements, and unretired sums are recoverable.
The internal wallets
The two largest payees in the whole run are the agency’s own internal units. FERMA CTLS Abuja received N269,629,206.51 in 16 monthly payments, and FERMA SMCS Abuja received N156,152,465.00 in 16 monthly payments, running from November 2023 to December 2025. The records describe each payment only as a road maintenance agency payment to the unit. Month after month, alongside the salary system and outside it, the money moved into the agency’s own wallets first.
Workers Day millions
The agency’s union chairmen were paid as financial assistance for Workers Day celebrations. Idris Abdulmumin, chairman of the agency’s branch of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees, and Onimisi Ozovehe Paul, chairman of its Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria branch, each received N10,600,000.00 in April 2025 and N8,670,000.00 in April 2024, N38,540,000.00 between them, for T-shirts, khaki hats, food, drinks, transportation and banners. The Fiscal Responsibility Act requires public funds to be spent on appropriated purposes. Union celebration kits are not among the statutory functions of a federal roads agency.
None of these payments is, by itself, proof of diversion. But N851.2 million paid to named persons and internal units, much of it as pass-throughs and refunds, is a retirement record the agency should be ready to open. The payment records show the money going out, to the Managing Director, to the conduit, to the board, to the union chairmen and to the climate travellers. They do not show it retired.
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