General
Ambode Under Fire over Report on Secrecy in Govt. Spending
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Lagos State Governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, has come under sharp criticisms over a report by an online newspaper, Premium Times, alleging that his administration has not been transparent with taxes of residents.
Those who reacted to the piece said they find it hard to believe that the state government force residents of the state to pay their taxes and threaten to punish them if they fail to comply, but government do not see mandatory to explain how the funds were used.
“In Nigeria, govt compels you to pay up ur taxes, yet cannot be transparent as to how these monies are spent! Absolute nonsense!” a commenter said on Twitter.
Below is the report by Premium Times.
There were smiles on the faces of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the two men who sat on both sides inside the Lagos House, Ikeja, as cameras’ clicked while the governor signed the Lagos State government’s N813 billion Appropriation Bill for 2017 into Law.
Flanked by Akinyemi Ashade, the Commissioner for Finance, and Rotimi Olowo, the Chairman House Committee on Appropriation, Mr Ambode said his administration was committed to prudent financial management and would ensure proper fiscal discipline in the implementation of the Appropriation Law.
The budget, the biggest ever by the Lagos State government since its creation, was made up of N507.816 billion earmarked for capital expenditure and N305.182 billion set aside for recurrent expenditure, an aggregate ration of 62:38.
But a breakdown of the budget figures has been kept away from the cameras as well as the public, a marked departure from previous years where even a summary of expenditures and earnings were uploaded on the government’s official website.
“They (Lagos State government) are very tricky about it,” Stanley Achonu, Operations Lead at BudgIT, a civic organisation that helps Nigerians better understand government’s annual budgets.
“What they publish is the summary of the budget, you know, what went to what ministry, it doesn’t include details of the budget.”
For the 2017 fiscal year, both the summary and the detailed breakdown – which had never been publicly disclosed – of the budget is missing on the budget website of the Lagos State government.
Months of efforts to get a clarification from Steve Ayorinde, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, yielded no results as he neither answered phone calls nor replied text messages.
A silent government
While providing a sectoral breakdown of the state’s 2017 budget last January, Mr Ashade said roads and infrastructure would get N141.692 billion, almost 20 percent of the total budget.
Between February and July, Governor Ambode commissioned over a dozen infrastructural projects, including the Abule Egba and Ajah Fly Overs; the Aboru-Abesan Link Bridge; and the Ojodu Berger Pedestrian Bridge, Lay By, Slip Road and Segregated Bus Park.
Others include the Omotayo Banwo/Kola Iyamolere Street in Ogudu, Kosofe local council; the Admiralty/Freedom Road in Lekki; the pedestrian bridge in Ojota; and a walkway in Jakande, Lekki.
In August, PREMIUM TIMES submitted two requests to the Lagos State government – an official letter requesting information and a Freedom of Information request – seeking the cost of some of these projects, including that of the 20 patrol vehicles procured for the Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command.
Although the state government acknowledged receipt of the two letters, there have been no responses two months after.
A similar FOI request months earlier asking for the cost of some projects undertaken by the state’s water corporation was also acknowledged but the information was not provided.
A Subnational Transparency Report published this year by BudgIT listed Lagos State among 16 states in Nigeria without a detailed public budget.
Sectoral allocations in the budget of Lagos State
On March 27, the state government held a “world press conference” where it rolled out activities lined up for the last 50 days of the Lagos@50 celebration – musical concerts, boat regatta, jazz and film festivals, comedy show and the governor’s banquet among dozens of other events – to commemorate the state’s 50th anniversary.
The state government did not also respond to PREMIUM TIMES enquiries about how much was spent on the year-long event.
But in an interview with Punch newspapers last May, Mr Ayorinde, responding to a question on how much the Lagos@50 celebration cost the state government said they received “more than N1 billion” in support from “sponsors.”
“Before the sponsors came, what Lagos did was to give seed money so that things could move. But from sponsors alone, we have raised more than N1bn which is not just going into celebration,” Mr Ayorinde said.
He did not provide details as to how much was the ‘seed money,’ who the sponsors were, and how the funds were disbursed.
Lanre Arogundade, Chairman of the International Press Centre, said the lack of access to public information in Lagos State is a concern for citizens and called for the issue to address urgently.
“Lagos is supposed to be the centre of excellence in everything but when the budget is not easily accessible, that’s worrisome,” Mr Arogundade said.
“We can only talk of high rate of transparency when FOI requests are responded to, when information are made readily available.”
In July, the Social Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) in conjunction with BudgIT wrote to the state’s procurement agency over the unavailability of public procurement journal to the public.
In a correspondence seen by PREMIUM TIMES, the agency said the governor had just inaugurated its governing board and had just requested to set a threshold for what it would consider as “major contracts.”
It further stated that the agency was working towards a holistic upgrade of its website in order to make it more interactive and advanced in line with international best practices.
“Upon completion of the said upgrade which we hope will be accommodated in the 2018 budget, the agency website will be better positioned to supply adequate responses to enquiries from stakeholders,” the agency stated in its response dated 11th July 2017.
Adetokunbo Mumuni, Executive Director at SERAP, said while his organisation had not had a “serious interaction” with the present government, it had had little success with Mr Ambode’s predecessor, Babatunde Fashola.
In December 2013, SERAP wrote to the Lagos State government requesting information and documents on spendings in public schools, following a $90 million World Bank loan, between 2009 and 2013.
The government did not respond.
In suit FHC/L/CS/57/2014 filed before a Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, SERAP urged the court to declare that by virtue of the provisions of Section 4(a) of the Freedom of Information Act, 2011, the governor is under a binding obligation to provide it with the information requested.
In its counter affidavit, the Lagos State government, represented by then Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ade Ipaye, argued that the Freedom of Information Act was a federal legislation and, as a result, not binding on states.
“The public records of Lagos State government are generated and kept by various ministries, departments, agencies and personnel of the state government in execution of their functions and responsibility in the service of the state,” Mr Ipaye, who is now Chief of Staff to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said.
“Such state government agencies and personnel are statutorily created or regulated by laws of the state House of Assembly and the handling of public of public records has serious security implications which are routinely handled by rules established by the state government.”
The court ruled in favour of Lagos State government.
“We’d sought information about the state of primary schools and what they have done; they refused, they insisted that the FOI must be domesticated,” Mr. Mumuni told PREMIUM TIMES.
“We reacted that that shouldn’t be and gave reasons why it shouldn’t be domesticated before such information is made available to us.
“We went to court but we lost. We are still appealing the case.”
In 2014, another division of the federal high court, in Enugu, ruled that the Freedom of Information Act is applicable in all states of the federation.
Hitting a brick wall
This year, Mr Arogundade’s IPC – in collaboration with BudgIT – sought to get a copy of the 2017 Lagos State government budget.
They hit a brick wall.
“I think it’s something worrisome and the issue needs to be taken up… because more can still be done by the government,” Mr Arogundade said.
Last February, a PREMIUM TIMES reporter seeking the Lagos State government’s response to claims by traders at the rebuilt Tejuosho Market in Yaba, was given the run-around by government officials.
First, the market officials directed the reporter to the Public Relations Officer at the state’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry at the Alausa secretariat, where an official redirected him to Lagos State Market Board.
At the Lagos State Market Board at the Old Secretariat in Ikeja GRA, a senior government official who declined to respond to questions directed the reporter back to Alausa, to the LGA Unit of state’s Ministry of Local Government Affairs, where he was referred to the Public Relations Officer.
Bisi Olufuwa, the ministry’s PRO, said she would direct the questions to her boss, the permanent secretary of the ministry.
“I am just seeing this (and you, too) for the first time and I promise to fix a session where you will meet my boss and discuss these issues,” said Ms Olufuwa.
The session was never fixed.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has said the implementation of the Defined Benefit Scheme Pension Harmonisation is a reform meant to advance and enhance pension payment equity in the country.
The chief executive of PTAD, Mrs Tolulope Abiodun Odunaiya, said this initiative was a landmark reform designed to restore fairness, improve retirees’ welfare and strengthen confidence in the administration of the country’s legacy pension system.
The harmonisation exercise marks one of the most significant policy interventions in the Defined Benefit Scheme since PTAD was established in 2013 to take over the management of pensions under the old federal pension arrangement.
Unlike periodic pension increases that merely raise existing benefits by a percentage, she stressed that pension harmonisation was further than that by recomputing pensions using the latest approved salary structures that existed before the closure of the Defined Benefit Scheme.
She noted that the objective is to ensure that retirees who held similar positions and rendered comparable years of service receive equitable pension benefits regardless of their retirement dates.
The initiative comes against the backdrop of years of agitation by pensioners over historical disparities in pension computation.
She added that the PTAD’s harmonisation programme seeks to resolve that challenge by restoring parity within the system. According to her, pension harmonisation is the formal recomputation of pensions using approved salary structures applicable before the DBS cut-off date.
In practical terms, it ensures that pension outcomes are determined by rank, grade level and years of service rather than the year of retirement.
The Directorate believes the exercise will significantly improve social justice by correcting historical inequities that disadvantaged thousands of retirees.
The harmonisation applies primarily to pure Federal Government pensioners as well as eligible retirees under the Parastatals Pension Department (PaPD), Defunct and Transferred Agencies Pension Department (DTAPD), and the Education and Health Pension Department (TEHPD), particularly those who initially served under the Federal Government before their agencies were transferred to state governments.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigeria Police Force will today, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, arraign the controversial director-general of the non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), Mr Adeniyi Adeyemi.
The arraignment will take place before Justice Mohammed Umar of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
The police had charged Mr Adeyemi alongside two others with eight counts, including forgery and impersonation, in the case marked FHC/ABJ/CR/562/2025.
The case was initially filed on November 27, 2025, by Mr Wisdom Madaki, a police prosecutor.
Court proceedings had stalled on June 16, scheduled for Mr Adeyemi’s arraignment, due to his absence from court on grounds of ill health.
According to the court documents, proposed prosecution witnesses to testify against the defendants include the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila; Paul Emmanuel, Jeremiah Imoukhede and Ituah Sylvester.
Others are civil servants working in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Akimbo Shola and Mr Adamu Balongu, a deputy superintendent of police, were on the list.
Also listed as witnesses are Mr Ojo Victor, Mr Omeh Amarachukwu, and Mr Wakili Saidu, all of whom were allegedly posted to work with Mr Adeyemi at the non-existent agency.
Others are Mrs Joy Ngwoke, the owner of Kachi Hotel in Abuja, and Mr Ven Okoriko, the pastor of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, Maitama.
The documentary exhibits planned to be tendered by the prosecution to prove the case include the police investigation report, Mr Gbajabiamila’s petition dated October 17, 2025, and Mr Adeyemi’s fake presidential appointment letter dated March 8, 2024.
They also include the request for a note verbale by Mr Adeyemi sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the approvals he got to open accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the request for approval of self-accounting status Mr Adeyemi sent to the Accountant-General of the Federation’s office and the conveyance of approval for take-off of the PFIPC.
Other documents listed by the prosecution are a letter of request for collaboration with the ministry in the area of land acquisition and offices across the 36 states of the federation; statements of all the witnesses and that of the defendants, and pictures.
The police, in the court document, said, “The prosecution shall at the trial call any other related witness or witnesses to prove its case.”
The prosecution accused Mr Adeyemi of operating the fictitious agency from the 2nd Floor of the Federal Secretariat Complex in Abuja, Phase III, before his arrest.
Last week, President Bola Tinubu directed the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to conduct a thorough investigation into the activities of the fictitious agency.
The president gave the ICPC 30 days to complete the investigation, so it is currently unclear how the outcome of the ICPC investigation would impact the police prosecution.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
A coordinated push to position gender inclusion as a driver of business competitiveness, investment and long-term economic growth has led to the introduction of the Nigeria Gender Country Programme (NGCP) by the private sector.
This initiative, led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, in partnership with Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Group Plc and the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), aligns advisory expertise, funding and partnerships to strengthen women’s representation in leadership, improve access to quality employment, and expand access to finance, technology and markets for women and women-led businesses.
It builds on the CEO Roundtable held in June and the progress achieved through Nigeria2Equal, IFC’s earlier initiative, as it now moves into implementation, with participating organisations expected to adopt practical, measurable gender-smart business practices.
The economic case is significant, with the program underpinned by research showing that closing gaps in women’s leadership, employment and entrepreneurship could generate an estimated $22.9 billion in additional economic output annually, reinforcing the economic case for stronger private sector action on gender inclusion.
“Advancing women’s economic participation is no longer simply a social aspiration; it is a business imperative, an investment in productivity, a catalyst for innovation and a driver of sustainable economic growth.
“Through the Nigeria Gender Country Program, we are creating a practical framework that will help businesses strengthen leadership, expand opportunity and unlock the inclusion dividend for Nigeria’s economy,” the chairman of NGX Group, Mr Umaru Kwairanga, stated.
The Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, represented by the Commissioner for Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade and Investment, Mrs Folashade Ambrose-Medebem, reaffirmed the state’s commitment to creating an enabling environment for women-led enterprises and strengthening inclusive economic development, while the Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, represented by Ms Aishatu Digili, called for stronger collaboration between government, development institutions and the private sector to accelerate women’s economic empowerment and expand opportunities for women across key sectors of the economy.
The Division Director for West and Central Africa at IFC, Mr Olivier Buyoya, said, “Creating more and better jobs is central to IFC’s mission across Africa. Economies grow faster, and businesses perform better when women have equal opportunities to participate, lead, innovate and succeed.
“Through the Nigeria Gender Country Program, we are bringing together the private sector, capital markets and development partners to help companies turn this opportunity into stronger business performance, greater competitiveness and more inclusive growth. We look forward to working with Nigerian businesses to unlock the full economic potential of women as a driver of Nigeria’s future prosperity.”
Speaking on behalf of the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr Emomotimi Agama, the Commission’s Executive Commissioner, Legal and Enforcement, Ms Frana Chukwuogor, said, “The Commission welcomes the Nigeria Gender Country Program as an important platform for deepening collaboration, innovation and knowledge sharing in support of inclusive market development. We commend the IFC for its leadership in promoting inclusive private sector development globally, and for its partnership with Nigeria in strengthening our financial markets.”
