By Secrets Reporters
In 1986, the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts opened felony Case F-86-019816 against Shawn Michael Davis. The case’s alias list carries Abiodun, Oluseun Adedapo, born 29 May 1960, the full name and birth date of Dapo Abiodun, and its charges included forgery, grand theft in the second degree and resisting an officer with violence. Five counts were dropped after a pre-trial intervention programme, two were no-actioned, and the record carries no conviction. Abiodun has governed Ogun State since 29 May 2019.
A SecretsReporters examination of the budget execution report published by the Ogun State Ministry of Budget and Planning for the first quarter of 2026 shows that his office, the Office of the Governor, spent N7,655,027,143.14 on overhead costs alone between January and March 2026, the first three months of the year. The document is the state’s own account of how the 2026 budget performed in the quarter, ministry by ministry, and it places the Governor’s Office at the top of the overhead table.
The 2026 Appropriation Law gave the Office of the Governor an overhead vote of N27,722,868,563.68 for the whole of 2026. At the pace the budget itself sets, one quarter of that vote is N6,930,717,140.92. The office spent N7,655,027,143.14 in the first quarter, which the report itself scores at 110.45 percent of the pro-rata amount. In three months the office consumed 27.61 percent of the money the law allowed it for twelve months.
No other arm of the Ogun State Government came close. The next largest overhead spend in the quarter was the Board of Internal Revenue at N2,240,721,020.81, and the Governor’s Office spent 3.42 times that amount. Total overhead spending across every ministry, department and agency in the state in the quarter was N40,495,175,064.07, and the Governor’s Office alone accounted for 18.90 percent of it.
The Same Habit In 2025
The first quarter of 2025 ran the same way. In that quarter the Office of the Governor spent N6,434,298,819.90 on overheads against an annual vote of N22,745,228,991.50, a performance the state’s report scored at 113.15 percent of pro-rata. The office had taken 28.29 percent of its full-year overhead vote by the end of March 2025. The 2026 first-quarter figure of N7,655,027,143.14 is 18.97 percent higher than the figure for the same quarter a year earlier.
The overhead figure is not the whole cost of the office. In the first quarter of 2026 the Office of the Governor also spent N1,532,256,514.04 on personnel costs and N319,784,150.00 on capital expenditure, bringing the total cost of running the office in three months to N9,507,067,807.18. Government House spent N92,400,665.00 on overheads and N3,651,960.00 on capital expenditure in the same quarter, and the Deputy Governor’s Office spent N90,332,500.00 on overheads.
Inside the same executive organ, the Contingencies vote carried N11,433,562,573.24 for overheads and N13,115,637,148.02 for capital expenditure in 2026, and the execution report records nothing spent against either vote in the quarter.
No Account Of What It Bought
For all of the N7,655,027,143.14, the execution report gives one figure and nothing beneath it. There is no breakdown of the overhead spending into travel, medical expenses, accommodation, fuel, entertainment or any other purpose anywhere in the document the state published. The report that tells the public the Governor’s Office spent more than its own budget pace allowed does not state what the money bought.
The state’s accounts are capable of finer detail when they are kept that way. The audited financial statements for 2023, signed by the Accountant-General, break statewide spending down item by item in their notes, down to welfare packages of N7,017,282,381.53, refreshment and meals of N1,159,675,552.78 and local medical expenses of N110,081,605.00 across the government for that year. No such accounting accompanies the Governor’s Office overhead total for the first quarter of 2026.
Inside the same executive organ, the execution report records that the Bureau of Protocol and Ceremonials spent N4,355,914.32 on personnel costs in the first quarter of 2026 against a personnel vote of zero in the appropriation for the bureau.
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