By Secrets Reporters
“Latest Notices From Goverment.”
That is the heading on the notices page of the state’s official award-publication channel – misspelt, and beneath it, nothing at all.
SecretsReporters examined the state’s official contract records and found not a single Bayelsa contract award published for 2026: no contractor names, no award amounts, no awarding ministries, no award dates but blank page where a full year’s contracting should be listed.
What the official spending records examined by SecretsReporters do show is money moving fast through the heart of Governor Douye Diri’s office. The General Services Bureau which is the Governor’s Office engine room was approved a total of N31,999,928,159.11 in the 2026 budget, roughly N32 billion. Of that, N23 billion was voted for personnel, N5 billion for overhead, and N4 billion for capital.
By the end of June, the Governor office had spent N14,333,381,414.53 which is 44.8 per cent of its full-year approval gone in six months. The overhead vote moved fastest of all: N3,338,568,384 of the N5 billion had been consumed by mid-year, a burn rate of 66.8 per cent which again is two-thirds of the year’s running costs spent in half the year. Capital releases lagged far behind at N1,097,964,384, just 27.4 per cent of the N4 billion capital vote. Personnel took roughly N9.9 billion of the half-year total, about 43 per cent of the bureau’s N23 billion personnel approval.
The named lines inside the bureau’s vote read like a calendar of state ceremony. Welfare packages carry N2.8 billion. Anniversaries and celebrations carry N2.735 billion in capital and another N800 million in overhead for special days and celebrations. Burial logistics take N120 million. Medical expenses locally stand at N15 million: the official medical provision for a political class that still flies abroad for its own treatment.
The bureau’s spending sits inside a larger Governor’s Office aggregate approved at N54,848,468,438.77. In the first quarter of 2026, the office recorded actual spending of N,725,786,435.48. In the second quarter, on a standalone basis, it recorded N13,264,554,154.52 with the pace quickening rather than slowing. The half-year total stands at N22,990,340,590.00, or 41.9 per cent of the office’s full-year approval gone by June.
On one side, the spending is itemised down to burial logistics and celebration days. On the other side, the awards behind the spending are invisible. The official contract records contain no 2026 awards for Bayelsa anywhere: no road contract, no building contract, no supply contract, absolutely nothing the public can set beside the payment records to test whether value was delivered and competition was held.
Ministries across the state carry billions in capital votes that will be paid to contractors this year; the award-publication channel that should name the contractors and the sums was built for exactly that purpose, and its notices page sits empty, yet governor’s office overhead is nearly seventy per cent spent and the year’s awards are at zero per cent published.
