Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed Approved N5.1 Billion For 130 Official Vehicles And Released N2.6 Billion In Six Months While Pensioners Were Owed N41.4 Billion

NewsNGR

The approved Bauchi State budget for 2026 provides N5,104,872,964.13 for the purchase of assorted 130 official motor vehicles for commissioners and public office holders, a line in the capital programme of the Ministry of Finance headquarters. The state’s audited accounts for the year ended 31 December 2025 record pension and gratuity arrears of N41,405,201,774.70 standing against the state as that budget took effect.

The money began to move at once. The budget performance report for the first quarter of 2026 records N1,600,000,000 spent on the purchase, and the report for the second quarter records a further N1,000,000,000, taking the release to N2,600,000,000 by the end of June 2026, 50.9 per cent of the provision, with N2,504,872,964.13 left undrawn. Spread across the 130 vehicles named in the project description, the approved sum works out at N39,268,253.57 for each vehicle. The performance reports under SecretsReporters scrutiny record the approval, the purpose and the amounts released, and nothing further: they name no supplier of the vehicles and state no delivery schedule.

Against that release stands what pensioners received. In the whole of 2025, the state paid out N11,652,444,471.84 in pension and gratuity. The arrears in the audited accounts are more than three and a half times everything paid to pensioners and gratuity beneficiaries in that year, and more than eight times the sum approved for the 130 vehicles.

The 2026 budget provides N9,179,373,000 for pension in its recurrent cost structure, and a further N3,194,920,061.36 as the employer contributory pension contribution, while the Bauchi State Contributory Pension Commission carries a total vote of N30,497,386,710.96 in the same budget. The arrears carried into the year are more than three times the pension provision and the employer contributory provision combined. The pension provision alone is 22.2 per cent of the arrears, and at that rate the arrears recorded at 31 December 2025 would take more than four years of the full annual provision to clear, before the pension obligations of 2026 itself are counted.

Pensioners are not the only creditors in the audited accounts. Total domestic arrears at 31 December 2025 stood at N52,652,239,780.43, up N8,013,440,377.34 on the previous year, and more than ten times the vehicles approval. Outstanding liabilities to contractors accounted for N6,000,119,157.49 of the total. Electricity bill arrears accounted for N3,965,099,955.11. Judgment debts and solicitors’ fees accounted for N1,133,949,818.38, and arrears on rented property accounted for N147,869,074.75. The five items in the Auditor-General’s table sum exactly to the total recorded. The electricity arrears and the judgment debts together come to N5,099,049,773.49, less than the sum approved for the 130 vehicles.

The Auditor-General’s report on the 2025 accounts carries the same position, with unretired imprest of N271,179,120.86 and outstanding advances of N641,962,314.76 recorded alongside the arrears.

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