By Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State proposed this budget, signed it into law and answers for every line in it, and one office inside it is swallowing money at a pace his own published records cannot account for. In the first six months of 2026, the office of his Special Adviser on State Security spent N7,783,715,002.51, which is 53.7 per cent of everything Diri voted for it for the whole year. The biggest share of that money is capital money, released against a capital vote behind which his performance records name no project, no contract and no supplier.
The office sits inside the Governor’s Office group in the budget book, and it carries no salary bill at all. Diri gave it N14.5 billion for 2026: N2.5 billion of overhead and N12 billion of capital. Every naira of the overhead is a single line, Security Vote Including Operations, which means the entire running cost of the office is one security vote with no breakdown attached to it. That is what SecretsReporters scrutiny of the state’s published budget and its first and second quarter performance reports establishes.
Six months, more than half gone
The spending started fast and then got faster. In the first quarter, the office spent N3,621,857,833.99, a quarter of its full-year vote gone in three months. In the second quarter, it spent N4,161,857,168.52. By the end of June, more than half of the year’s money had gone out with half of the year still to run.
The capital side is where Diri’s records go quiet. Of the capital vote, N6,727,714,105.24 had been spent by mid-year, 56.1 per cent of the year’s capital money in six months. What the budget book says the vote holds is one generic line, Purchase of Security Equipment, at N11 billion, and N1 billion of office shopping beside it: N300 million for canteen and kitchen equipment, N300 million for office furniture and fittings, N150 million for a power generating set, N100 million for computers, N50 million for computer printers, N50 million for shredding machines and N50 million for scanners. What the money released by June actually bought, the Governor’s performance reports do not say. They record the capital spending in bulk, at the level of the office and the spending category, and no published record names one project delivered, one item received or one contractor paid from the releases. The state’s official award channel, as the first part of this series established, has published no contract award for Bayelsa for 2026 at all.
The security vote itself slept, then jumped. In the first quarter, the office spent N56 million of its overhead. In the second quarter, it spent N1,000,000,897.27, taking half-year overhead spending to N1,056,000,897.27, which is 42.2 per cent of the year’s overhead vote. A security vote that moved N56 million in three months moved a billion naira in the next three, and the published records offer no word on what either sum did.
Security lines everywhere in Diri’s budget
The adviser’s office is not the only security money Diri wrote into this budget. In the same book, Government House, his own seat of power, carries a security vote including operations of just N9,020,000, cut from N1.2 billion the year before. His Deputy Governor’s Office carries N1 billion for security services. His Directorate of Inter-Governmental Affairs carries N660 million for security services. The Governor who trimmed the security vote printed against his own house to nine million naira left the fat security money sitting in offices that answer to him, and the fattest of them all in an adviser’s office with no salary bill and a capital vote the size of a ministry’s.
Bayelsa is a state where kidnapping, oil theft and cult violence are the standing reasons given for security money, and Diri asks for the money in the name of all three. The records his government published for the first half of 2026 end where they end: billions out of the door under the name of security, and not one named project standing in the published record against the capital releases. That is the Governor’s budget, the Governor’s signature and the Governor’s record.
