Fejiro Oliver
N57,990,000,000.00. In 2025, that is what Ondo State recorded as the cost of laying asphalt overlay on 100 kilometres of highways across the state. It is the single biggest capital project line in the state’s 2025 audited accounts, and it sits inside a Ministry of Works and Infrastructure capital spend of N66,555,982,783.97 in 2025, which is 51 percent of the state’s entire N131,099,546,698.12 capital outlay for the year. But the audited statements name no contractor who laid that asphalt, no road that received it, and no kilometre-by-kilometre breakdown of the work. For the price of a small federal ministry, Ondo bought 100 kilometres of asphalt overlay, and the books do not say from whom.
The silence is structural, not accidental. The General Purpose Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2025 report capital only at MDA level; there is no project-by-project or contractor-by-contractor schedule in the statements themselves. The biggest-spending ministry in the state spent N66.56 billion Naira in 2025 and its books disclose not a single contract.
What is named, however, shows a government spending big in 2025 on the tangible and the political. The Owena Dam project took N9,000,000,000.00 in 2025 under an AFDB-assisted programme. The upgrading and renovation of 203 primary health centres under IMPACT took N5,080,000,000.00. Malaria drugs and test kits under CARES took N5,070,000,000.00. Eight ambulances cost N812,250,000.00 in 2025. The judiciary got 61 Toyota Corollas for N117,500,000.00. Amotekun got five armoured personnel carriers for N127,290,000.00. The Ministry of Finance did a bulk motor-vehicle purchase of N3,930,000,000.00 in 2025, and General Administration spent another N2,642,285,462.26 on vehicles, but neither purchase names who supplied the vehicles or who they went to.
The rural-roads layer of 2025 is where Ondo’s books are most open. Named RAAMP roads with contractors appear: the 25.77km Idanre-Alaelefosan road by DORTMUND for N1,550,000,000.00, the 17.24km Epe Junction-Epe-Laworo-Atamo road by HMF for N948,750,000.00, the 10.71km Iyansan-Atoranse road by FUTURENET for N633,600,000.00, the Oda-Cocoa Board-Camp 2 road by EMAMED for N362,990,000.00, the Ode-Omi-Iyara road by POTTERS PARTNERS LTD for N105,330,000.00, plus FADAMA farm roads and jetties across Ese Odo, Ilaje and the Akokos, 133 named UBEC school works, and the construction of the Deputy Governor’s Lodge for N761,290,000.00 in 2025. These are the named exceptions that make the N57.99 billion Naira unnamed asphalt overlay stand out even more.
Then comes the comfort spending of 2025. Hotel accommodation took N1,650,000,000.00. Welfare packages took N1,290,000,000.00. Food stuff and catering services took N880,000,000.00. Refreshment and meals took N767,400,000.00. Generator fuel took N838,370,000.00 and vehicle fuel N518,200,000.00. Local travel for others took N3,920,000,000.00 and international travel N507,950,000.00. The Governor’s Lodge in Abuja was rented for two years at N405,000,000.00 in 2025. Rainstorm relief materials took N500,050,000.00 and Ilaje sea-incursion relief N407,400,000.00, while the state paid N630,000,000.00 in legal fees to farm out 18 civil cases in 2025.
And then there are two lines that should never have been spent at all. In 2025, Ondo recorded N14,202,257,575.19 as “Cost of Collections” and N13,109,519,902.26 as “Non-capital cost”, both with zero budget provision. Together, N27,311,777,477.45 spent with no appropriation whatsoever. Section 121 of the 1999 Constitution says no money shall be withdrawn from a state’s Consolidated Revenue Fund except in the manner prescribed by the House of Assembly, and the Financial Regulations repeat the point: every naira spent must stand on a vote. Spending N27.31 billion Naira on two lines with nil budget in 2025 is extra-budgetary spending by definition, and it passed without a word in the budget.
The year’s wage bill also demands a look. Salaries and wages jumped 49 percent in one year, from N48,190,000,000.00 in 2024 to N71,700,786,610.38 in 2025, while allowances collapsed, which reads like a reclassification rather than a pay rise, but the statements do not explain it. The biggest wage line, the Teaching Service Commission, took N25,910,000,000.00 in 2025.
Ondo closed 2025 with N277,320,000,000.00 in cash, the fattest cash pile of any state on this list relative to its spending, and a reported surplus of N201,210,000,000.00. But capital execution was only 53 percent of budget in 2025 against recurrent at 85 percent, which means the state’s people got less than half the capital projects they were promised while the machinery of government got almost everything it asked for. The roads got their asphalt, at N57.99 billion Naira for 100km, and the state’s books will not say who laid a single metre of it.
