By Secrets Reporters
The audited financial statements of Oyo State for the year ended 31 December 2025 record borrowings of N368,235,900,009.83 on the statement of financial position. The corresponding figure in the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2024 was N151,424,987,182.63. Total liabilities on the 2025 statements stand at N397,489,135,622.01, against N154,975,562,859.75 at the end of 2024, and net assets fell from N533,193,466,802.03 at the end of 2024 to N220,995,094,566.70 at the end of 2025.
The same statements record cash and bank balances of N88,008,252,519.87 at 31 December 2025. The balance a year earlier was N112,091,318,932.09. In the year in which the cash balance fell by N24,083,066,412.22, the booked borrowings of the state rose by N216,810,912,827.20.
The audited statements for 2024 record total receipts of N490,891,902,235.26 against an approved budget of N559,990,115,348.34 for that year, with operating payments of N197,337,651,878.39. The bank balance recorded at the end of 2024 is the same N112,091,318,932.09 from which the statements for 2025 take their opening position, and the borrowings recorded at that date were N151,424,987,182.63.
The budget performance report for 2025 records total revenue of N669,457,924,039.30 and total expenditure of N668,757,923,876.26 for that year. The budget the state worked with in 2025 had been revised from N684,149,398,399.06 to N984,036,798,399.06, after a supplementary provision of N299,887,400,000. Capital receipts for 2025 came to N219,968,862,179.44, and N219,963,875,917.14 of that amount consisted of domestic loans drawn from financial institutions, against a revised domestic loan budget of N275,569,797,732.24. Of every amount entered as capital receipts in 2025, the domestic loans account for all but N4,986,262.30 of the total. The Fiscal Responsibility framework requires state borrowing to be tied to capital projects and kept within limits the revenues of the state can service.
The approved budget for 2026 totals N892,085,074,480.79. The capital receipts in that budget are put at N327,270,723,008.01, and loans account for N322.54 billion of the amount. The opening balance carried into the year is N42,306,294,114.10. The budget book therefore rests the capital programme of 2026 on borrowed money to the extent of the N224,000,000,000 domestic loan provision and the N98,533,230,662 provided as international loans.
The borrowing continued into the new year at a faster pace. In the first quarter of 2026, the state drew domestic loans of N164,880,596,097.82. The domestic loan budget for the whole of 2026 is N224,000,000,000, and the amount drawn in the first three months is 73.6 percent of it. The budget performance report for the first quarter of 2026 records capital receipts of N165,616,866,124.03 for the quarter, and every source of capital receipts other than domestic loans accounts for N736,270,026.21 of that amount. Total revenue for the quarter, including the opening balance, was N485,761,930,747.25. Debt service provided in the 2026 budget is N33,925,000,000, made up of foreign interest of N16,500,000,000, domestic interest of N11,280,000,000, foreign principal of N6,120,000,000 and domestic principal of N25,000,000. The amount paid as debt service in the first quarter of 2026 was N4,466,680,855.70, all of it foreign principal, and no interest was paid in that quarter. Debt service paid in the whole of 2025 was N30,239,804,003.97.
The audited statements also carry movements between the two years which the published documents do not explain. Intangible assets stand at N421,498,325,435.44 in the statements for 2024 and at N1,313,430,835.90 in the statements for 2025. A translational reserve of negative N375,876,443,309.04 appears in the 2025 statements against a figure of zero in 2024. Infrastructure stands at N26,780,008,488.90 in 2024 and at N312,130,951,099.20 in 2025. No explanation of these restatements was located in the published statements.
The Auditor-General’s certificate bound into the audited statements for 2024 is unqualified, and the certificate bound into the audited statements for 2025 is also unqualified. The 2025 certificate states that its opinion is based on available documents. The basis of accounting recorded in the two certificates changed from the cash basis in 2024 to the accrual basis in 2025, and no audit queries with figures are published in any of the documents examined by SecretsReporters. The statements record total assets of N618,484,230,188.72 at 31 December 2025, against N688,169,029,661.78 a year earlier.
