By Secrets Reporters
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency recorded N6,772,721,045 in 2024 across six heads of recurrent overhead: office cleaning, health and hospital services, an operational contingency vote, operational expenses and imprest, maintenance of its Nigerian buildings, and maintenance of one office in London. The figures come from the agency’s own published expense records for the year. None of the six is a ship, a rescue asset, a dredging contract or a marine pollution response. Together they averaged N564.39 million every month, and not one of them carries, on the face of the records, an itemised account of what the money bought.
Dr Dayo Mobereola became Director-General of the agency in March 2024, appointed on 11 March 2024 with the presidential statement confirming the appointment dated 12 March 2024, and he led the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency for roughly nine months of the year covered by these records. The annual expense record does not separate the spending inherited from his predecessor from the spending processed under his own management, and this report invents no such separation. The N6.77 billion is a full-year agency total, and the agency he has led for most of that year owes the public an account of it.
N979.3 million to clean the offices
The expense records place office cleaning at N979,301,045 for the year. A published Lagos benchmark for corporate office cleaning puts a monthly contract at N100,000, the final price varying with the size, location and use of the premises. Treating each N100,000 monthly contract as the cost of one dedicated cleaner, the agency’s cleaning figure equals more than 816 cleaners kept on monthly contracts for an entire year. SecretsReporters does not present that comparison as a finding about how many cleaners the agency engaged. It is the measure of the sum. The records do not state how many offices were cleaned, how many cleaners were engaged, or which firm held the contract. Cleaning contracts of this size sit squarely within the Public Procurement Act 2007, whose principles require open competition, transparency and documented value for money, and the documentation behind a N979.3 million cleaning year is the first part of the account the agency owes.
N1.97 billion in hospital bills, N662.73 million beyond full premium cover
Health and hospital services took N1,972,885,000. Against the agency’s reported workforce of 1,750 staff, a generous premium annual health maintenance organisation benchmark of N748,660 per person would cover every member of staff for N1,310,155,000. The recorded hospital figure stands N662,730,000 above the cost of that full premium cover. The comparison does not prove that any particular bill was false. It establishes that after the price of top-tier insurance for the entire workforce is met in full, more than N662 million of hospital spending remains on the face of the records with no named hospital, no stated number of patients and no breakdown of the treatment paid for.
N1.26 billion of contingency and imprest with no itemised account
Two of the six carried the loosest descriptions in the year’s records. Operational contingency took N500,500,000, and operational expenses and imprest took N760,275,000, a combined N1,260,775,000 recorded without quantities, recipients or stated emergencies. At a monthly pay rate of N100,000, that combined sum carries the purchasing power of more than 1,050 workers paid for a full year. Imprest and contingency votes are cash-style instruments, and the law governing them is not ambiguous. Section 38 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 places a duty on every agency to apply public money only as appropriated and for value received. A N1.26 billion block carried under two general labels, with no published retirement of the imprest and no account of the contingencies met, is a block for which that statutory account has not been rendered.
N1.56 billion to maintain Nigerian buildings
Building maintenance for the headquarters, annex and zonal office buildings took N1,559,760,000, an average of N129.98 million every month, recorded as one broad sum. A common facilities-management yardstick places annual routine maintenance at roughly two to five per cent of a property’s replacement value. Applied to the agency’s figure, the spending sits at the level expected for maintaining a building estate worth between N31.2 billion and N78 billion. The same yardstick gives a modest office block with a replacement value of N5 billion an annual routine maintenance envelope of about N100 million to N250 million, so the agency’s single sum could carry that benchmark for at least six such buildings at the highest rate, or more than fifteen at the lower rate. The records do not state whether roofs were replaced, lifts rebuilt, electrical systems renewed or floors rehabilitated, and they do not value the estate said to require this level of upkeep. Maintenance spending of N1.56 billion falls under the same Public Procurement Act 2007 principles of open competition, transparency and documented value for money, and the works behind the sum are the second part of the account the agency owes.
One London office, a separate N1 billion
The expense records carry the London office separately, apart from the N1,559,760,000 recorded for the Nigerian buildings. Maintenance of the London office took N1,000,000,000 in the same year, an average of N83.33 million every month. General London office-market checks put annual service charges at around £8 to £15 per square foot. At an illustrative conversion of N2,000 to one pound, the agency’s N1 billion becomes about £500,000. At the upper market rate of £15 per square foot, that sum could pay a full year’s service charge on about 33,333 square feet of office space. At £8 per square foot, it could cover roughly 62,500 square feet, the scale of a substantial multi-floor corporate occupation. The comparison is generous to the agency, because service charges commonly cover shared services across a whole commercial building rather than one tenant’s maintenance alone. The records do not state the size of the London premises, whether the agency owns or rents it, or whether the N1 billion paid for ordinary upkeep, a complete refurbishment or several unrelated jobs.
