By They file into the Exco Annex at Government House, Abakaliki, and settle into one hundred new executive armchairs, deep-seated and high-backed. Trays of refreshment circle the room. Outside, the generators hum, the convoy idles in the forecourt, and in the Account Department a clerk turns the key of a brand new Toyota Hilux. Every item in that scene sits priced in Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru’s own office budget, and the budget is the fattest personal office book in his government.
The Office of the Executive Governor carries an approved total of N33,065,069,000 for 2026. Overhead alone, the money that keeps the Governor’s own household of power running day to day, takes N9,338,069,000 of it. SecretsReporters scrutiny of the approved lines shows what that overhead is for, and it is not the business of governing Ebonyi. It is the business of moving, feeding and seating one office.
The travel and feeding book
Local travel and transport, labelled only as others, takes N1,700,000,000. International travel takes N250,000,000, and travel training takes another N50,000,000, so the Governor’s office set aside a combined N2,000,000,000 simply to move. Refreshment and meals are priced at N277,169,000, the tea and the trays of the morning scene costed to the last naira. Fuel and lubricants run to N600,400,000, of which motor vehicle fuel takes N300,000,000 and plant and generator fuel takes N300,000,000, the N400,000 balance sitting in a further fuel sub-line.
The comforts, named and priced
The building is provided for like the men inside it. Rehabilitation of the Exco Chamber building is approved at N700,000,000. The one hundred executive armchairs for the Exco Annex are priced at N100,000,000 in total, N1,000,000 for every chair a commissioner lowers himself into. An LED projector for the Government House Chapel costs N50,000,000. The Toyota Hilux for the Account Department costs N100,000,000. These are not estimates whispered by opponents. They are the Governor’s own approved figures, printed in his own budget.
What six months did to the book
Then the quarterly records arrived, and they arrived mute. Ebonyi’s published budget implementation reports give the Governor’s Office no line-by-line actuals at all, only office totals by economic class. The totals are heavy enough. The office spent N4,857,476,552.95 in the first half of 2026, N2,244,042,323.85 of it in the first quarter and N2,613,434,229.10 in the second. Of that spending, N4,042,139,361.25 was overhead alone, 43.3 percent of the entire year’s overhead budget consumed by June, and 83.2 percent of everything the office spent in the half year. In the same six months, the office’s capital vote of N22,015,000,000 released just N136,678,075, a performance of 0.6 percent. The comfort book burned at full speed while the capital book barely moved.
So the position on the Governor’s own published record is this. Every comfort of his office was approved in print, the travel votes, the refreshment vote, the fuel votes, the chamber rehabilitation and the hundred armchairs, each one named and priced in his budget. His office then burned through its overhead at a pace that emptied close to half the year’s provision by June, and neither quarterly report states how much any one of those named lines took, whether the armchairs were bought, what the Hilux cost on delivery, or how much of the refreshment vote has already been eaten. The approvals are published to the last naira. The spending on them is published as one lump. That lump, and the silence inside it, belong to Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru alone.
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