Vero Record

Reporting and documentary investigation from Nigeria. What the paper says, and what it does not.

Archive

Everything we have published, in one place. 70 graded reports and 25 dispatches, 28 Aug 2026 to 1 Oct 2026. The search reads the whole of each piece, not only its headline.

October 2026

  1. PoliticsA Nigeria's own OPL 245 corruption case against Shell and Eni was struck out in 2025 for want of diligent prosecution, Shell's SEC filings show The Tinubu administration has called its March 2026 settlement with Eni over the OPL 245 oil block historic. Defending it, Attorney-General Lateef Fagbemi said Nigeria had faced a potential liability of more than US$2 billion, and that proceedings in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy had not established any wrongdoing. Vero Record read what Eni and Shell told the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the arbitration record at the World Bank's ICSID, and Eni's written answers to shareholders. The only figure Eni published for its claim is $700 million in delay damages, alongside forced conversion of the licence and an unquantified reserve. Nigeria had counter-claims of its own in the arbitration, and the settlement waived all pending claims. Nigeria's 2017 corruption case against the companies ended in 2025 without a verdict, struck out because it had not been prosecuted.
  2. PoliticsA Obi says he left his UK company when he became governor. Its 2006 accounts were signed off in his name in November 2007 Peter Obi has said he "resigned immediately" from Next International (UK) Limited when he took office in Anambra in March 2006, and his campaign has said the firm was then being wound down. Vero Record downloaded and read the company's public filings in the UK register, 73 documents in all. They show accounts approved on 22 November 2007 "signed on their behalf by: Peter Obi, Director". They also show the company's books growing more than fivefold, to £11.1m, in his first three years in office, and his name on every shareholder list the company filed until 2016. No tribunal has ruled on any of this.
  3. PoliticsB Atiku's sworn INEC form dates his master's degree to 2020 and his school certificate to 1961. The certificate filed with it says 2021, his own life story 1965 On 1 August 2026 INEC published the nomination papers of the ADC presidential candidate. On a form he swore to before a commissioner for oaths in June, Atiku Abubakar gives three education dates: 1954, 1961 and 2020. The Anglia Ruskin University certificate published with the form reads "November 2021". His own campaign website said in 2014 that he entered secondary school in 1960 and finished in 1965. None of this shows that he lacks the constitutional minimum qualification, and nothing we saw suggests any certificate is forged. What it shows is a sworn form whose dates do not match the candidate's own documents.
  4. PoliticsA Oyo says it has paid retirees over N90bn in gratuities under Makinde. Its own accounts record N16.74bn to the end of 2024, while the amount owed rose by N14.36bn In September the Oyo State Government announced that it had paid more than N90bn in gratuities since Seyi Makinde took office in 2019. Makinde is now the Allied Peoples Movement's presidential candidate. Vero Record downloaded and read the state's own financial statements for 2019 to 2024. They record N16.74bn in gratuity paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund over those six years. They also show the state's unpaid pension and gratuity bill rising from N24.83bn at the end of 2018 to N39.19bn at the end of 2024. In the two most recent sets of statements, that bill appears as a dash on the main balance sheet.
  5. PoliticsA INEC lists the DLA presidential candidate as 35. Two UK company filings for a director of the same name give a 1994 birth date INEC's signed final list gives Adebisi Moses Olusoji an age of 35, which is exactly the constitutional minimum for president. Two Companies House incorporation filings, made in 2022 and 2024 for companies under the "Thrillers" brand he has fronted in Nigeria, record a Nigerian director named Moses (Olusoji) Adebisi born in April 1994. On that date he would be 32 on polling day. Which record is right is not established, and the link between the filings and the candidate is our own inference, set out in full below.
  6. PoliticsA UK company register has listed BOOT Party candidate Sunday Adenuga as British since 2017, after earlier filings said Nigerian In 2008 and again in 2016, filings for Sunday Adenuga's London-area consultancy gave his nationality as Nigerian. Every filing since June 2017 says British, and so does the live register today. Section 137 of the constitution disqualifies anyone who has "voluntarily acquired the citizenship of a country other than Nigeria" from the presidency, although lawyers disagree on how far that reaches. What Adenuga swore to INEC on the question has not been made public.
  7. PoliticsA Abbas-Bin Aliyu's website says he holds US postgraduate degrees. INEC's final candidate list records a BSc The ADP presidential candidate's official website says he earned "postgraduate degrees from Concordia College in the United States". INEC's signed final list of 2027 candidates records his qualifications as "FSLC SSCE BSC". A draft Wikipedia biography created by an account that declared a conflict of interest put the degrees at Concordia College, Alabama. US Department of Education records show that college reported no graduate offering in any year we checked and closed in June 2018. On 3 June 2026 the draft swapped both Concordia degrees for a Nigerian BSc dated 2022 to 2026. The candidate's website still carries the original sentence.
  8. PoliticsA A 2025 profile says Adewole Adebayo challenged the CERPAC contract. The 2008 arbitration award names him as the contractor's advocate against Nigeria A profile of the SDP presidential candidate, published by The Guardian in September 2025, says he argued that the residence-permit contract between the Ministry of Interior and Continental Transfert Technique Limited was "exploitative, inflated" and a symptom of corruption. The signed 2008 arbitration award over that contract names "Mr Wole Adebayo" as the company's advocate against the Federal Government, and it awarded the company N29,660,166,207.48. In Washington that award became a $276,111,640.96 judgment against Nigeria. On 1 April 2025 a US court extended it for another twelve years after the company said it had still not collected.
  9. PoliticsA INEC said in 2025 it could not list Omo-Aje as Action Alliance chairman. Its register now lists him "By Court Order" Rufai Adekunle Omo-Aje is the Action Alliance's presidential candidate, nominated by a party he chairs. On 9 October 2025 INEC signed a statement saying it "cannot list Omoaje's name as the Chairman" while a Court of Appeal judgment against him was "still subsisting", and that his own appeal was at the Supreme Court. INEC's register now shows him as national chairman, marked "(By Court Order)". We found no published Supreme Court decision in that appeal, and INEC has not said publicly which order it is obeying.
  10. PoliticsB Okwori proposes 40 per cent women on every NDP list. Her party's National Assembly lists have 15 women among 92 candidates Two days after INEC published the final 2027 candidate lists, the National Democratic Party's presidential candidate and national chairman said the party was proposing at least 40 per cent women on all its executive and candidate lists. INEC's own records put the NDP at 16.3 per cent on the National Assembly ballot, with one woman among the five national officers the commission lists. That is still a higher share than most parties.
  11. Public MoneyA Nigeria's debt office now lists a $1.5bn First Abu Dhabi Bank swap as external debt. It accounts for 57 per cent of the quarter's rise The Debt Management Office's June 2026 tables add a new line, "First Abu Dhabi Bank (Total Return Swap)", at $1,500.00 million. The March tables had no such line. A companion DMO table meant to split external debt between the states and the federal government leaves the federal row blank.
  12. Public MoneyA Bauchi's audit report counts N110.02 billion of foreign loans in one table and drops them from the next, turning a rise in capital receipts into a 30 per cent fall The Bauchi State Auditor-General's report on the 2025 accounts, signed in May 2026 and posted on the state website at the end of July, gives the state's 2025 capital receipts as N177.14 billion, N152.87 billion and N67.12 billion in different tables. The smallest figure leaves out N110.02 billion of external loans, and the report uses it to describe a 30.45 per cent fall from 2024. The same report puts Bauchi's loan stock at N441.69 billion and its total debt stock at N494.34 billion, and certifies the accounts as true and fair.

September 2026

  1. PoliticsB Gombe PDP's rerun put Pantami back on top. INEC's own register dates came before he left the APC On 29 September the Peoples Democratic Party in Gombe re-ran its governorship primary on a court order, and Isa Ali Pantami won it, according to reported results. INEC's own press releases say every party's membership register was already filed by 8 May 2026. Pantami's lawyers told the court he resigned from the APC on 19 May. The judgment that reportedly upheld his PDP membership has not been published, and we could not find how it deals with that gap.
  2. PoliticsA In 2018 the State House said Buhari had written to the National Assembly under Section 145. Its three statements on Tinubu's 2026 leave do not mention a letter The Presidency published three statements about President Tinubu's leave in Europe, from his departure on 30 August to his flight home on 29 September. We read all three in the State House's own records. None says a written declaration went to the Senate President and the Speaker, and none names an Acting President. The same website still carries a 2018 statement saying Buhari's letter had been sent.
  3. PoliticsB Four state assemblies have backed state police in press reports, and none has published its own record of the vote that Vero Record could find Section 9 of the Constitution asks the states for one thing: a resolution of the House of Assembly, from at least two-thirds of the 36 states. In the two weeks since the National Assembly sent the state police alteration bill out, Osun, Edo, Rivers and Oyo have been reported as approving it. So far the only public account of how each House voted comes from speakers' announcements, aides' statements and newspaper reports. None of the four has published votes and proceedings, and the reports describe the approvals in different procedural terms.
  4. Public MoneyA CBN's rate reset rests on inflation figures that match NBS's own files. The communique does not mention that food inflation rose in June and July We checked every price figure in Monetary Policy Communique No. 164 against the National Bureau of Statistics' August, July, June and May 2026 CPI reports and spreadsheets. The numbers are copied correctly. The fuller NBS series shows a slower, more uneven decline than the communique describes, and the 3.5-point cut changes the corridor more at the top than at the bottom.
  5. Public MoneyA Budget Office's latest report restates 2025 first-half deficits N1.64 trillion higher and first-half capital releases from N428.18bn to N1.63bn The Budget Office of the Federation's third-quarter 2025 implementation report, the newest one its website lists, reprints the first two quarters of 2025 with different numbers from the ones it published for those same quarters. The earlier reports are still online and do not match. The newer report does not explain the changes, and it gives two different figures for its own third-quarter deficit.
  6. Public MoneyA Before the World Bank's $500m top-up for ACReSAL, its own report cut the project's main land figure by 250,960 hectares The first of the three $500 million World Bank credits reported on 28 September goes to the board on 29 October. It would add money to the northern land-restoration project ACReSAL. In June the Bank's own progress report for that project cut its main land figure from 799,868.76 hectares to 548,908, after a mid-term review tightened how land is counted.
  7. AccountabilityA 431 phones forfeited under a 2006 fraud law: EFCC's own releases on the Victoria Island 'HK' case give three phone counts, two raid dates and two charge sheets A Federal High Court judge in Lagos made a final forfeiture order on 431 mobile phones on 29 September 2026. We read that release next to the seven earlier EFCC releases on the same December 2024 raid. The commission's own published record gives 4,091, 1,596 and 431 as phone counts, 10 and 19 December as raid dates, and 11 and seven as the number of counts in the charge. None of that changes who the court convicted, but it leaves open what happened to the rest of the seized property.
  8. AccountabilityA The Maiduguri T-shirt charge sheet names printing, not drugs The First Information Report filed against five men in Maiduguri accuses them of printing "Tinubu Must Go" T-shirts to breach the peace. The drugs the Borno police later described do not appear on it.
  9. Dispatch We kept looking for Nigeria’s public records. Then we put 1.5 million of them in one place. A government document can be public and still be almost impossible to find. It may sit on a ministry website with a broken search function, disappear when the site is redesigned, or survive …
  10. Dispatch Peter Obi gave Nigerians an account number and said: prove me wrong and I'll stop campaigning. So I followed the account. Most financial claims in Nigerian politics are built so that nobody can audit them. A state was transformed, nothing was inherited, billions were saved, every obligation was cleared, and by …
  11. PoliticsA INEC's own 2027 register deadline fell one day short of its 21-day rule In March 2026 the commission moved the deadline for party membership registers to 10 May and said primaries could run until 30 May. Counted forward, a register filed on the last permitted day could not lawfully have supported a primary inside that window. The commission later said every party complied, but it has not published the date on which each register arrived.
  12. PoliticsA Eight House bills share the name of the state police amendment now before the states. The public record does not say which one was sent The Constitution (Sixth Alteration) Bill, 2026 went to the 36 state assemblies on 16 September. The House's own 2026 Order Papers list eight private bills with that short title, while the bill actually voted on carries a different title and number, HB. 2797. The National Assembly has still published no Votes and Proceedings that would show what each chamber approved.
  13. PoliticsA Lagos says it has carried out 69% of its 2026 budget. Its own table says 34.6% The Lagos State Government's second-quarter 2026 budget implementation report gives two readings of the same half-year. Its summary table puts spending at 34.6% of the approved annual budget. Its conclusions say 69%.
  14. Public MoneyA States' foreign debt grew 42% in a year, and the March table didn't show it The Debt Management Office's June 30, 2026 table puts Nigeria's public debt at N166,788,480.19 million, and its parts add up. In dollars, the external debt owed by the states and the FCT went from US$4,811.92 million to US$6,832.80 million in twelve months. The March 2026 table, published in between, does not split external debt by who owes it.
  15. Public MoneyA The government's own account of August's FAAC sharing gives two totals and two VAT figures, and its VAT deductions exceed the VAT collected The Federal Ministry of Information published the September 2026 FAAC release under a headline of N2.338 trillion and an opening sentence of N2.58 trillion. Adding up its own figures shows which numbers hold and which do not.
  16. Public MoneyA NNPC's own monthly reports show July profit at N279 billion, about half of June's The same day NNPC Limited announced a N7.2 trillion profit for 2025, its most recent monthly summary, for July 2026, showed profit, revenue and oil output all lower than in June. The summary also puts statutory payments for January to July 2026 below the figure its July 2025 summary gave for January to June 2025.
  17. AccountabilityA 37 reported deaths in NSCDC custody in Minna. What the government has put on paper so far is two press releases A presidential statement of 18 September and a ministerial order of 19 September set up a ten-member committee, name 20 suspended officers plus the state commandant, and give the inquiry two weeks. Neither document says how the detainees died, and the Corps' own website has published nothing on it.
  18. AccountabilityA The cash transfer office answered the Auditor-General in September. The audit report records "No response" to all eight of its queries The National Cash Transfer Office's public rebuttal deals with one of the eight queries in the Auditor-General's 2024 non-compliance report. It says evidence reached the auditors. The report says the evidence was never presented, and it records no management reply to any query.
  19. AccountabilityA NERC's revised order on DisCo revenue starts a 180-day clock from an "initial Order" its website does not carry Order NERC/2026/062A takes effect on 4 September 2026 but applies to the August 2026 market cycle, and it dates a debt-reconciliation deadline from an earlier order that we could not find on the Commission's orders page, live or archived.
  20. Dispatch 1 OCTOBER - THE RECORD OPENS. The Tinubu Files are only the first door. For the last few weeks, most people here have known Dr Vero through investigations. A budget line that did not make sense, a government programme buried inside thousands of pages, a number r…
  21. Public MoneyA The Appropriation Act Nigeria signed authorises N16.73 trillion more than the budget details the Budget Office published Vero opened both files. The Budget Office's published 2026 Appropriation Bill details total N51,592,233,171,028. The Act the President signed authorises N68,323,309,818,667. The two documents reconcile head for head, to the naira, which is what makes the N16,731,076,647,639 gap measurable. It also contains 8,076 project lines carrying a code prefix the Bill uses not once.
  22. Public MoneyA Agriculture's capital budget grew by N2.13 trillion between the Bill and the Act while its personnel and overhead did not move by one naira In the Budget Office's published Bill details, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security has a capital allocation of N1,300,452,463,830. In the signed Act it has N3,427,147,237,462. Personnel and overhead are identical in both, to the last digit. The ministry also acquires 3,423 project lines that the Bill does not contain.
  23. Public MoneyA Labour and Employment's capital budget quadrupled between the Bill and the Act, and 96 per cent of the increase can be named line by line The Budget Office's published Bill details give the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment a capital allocation of N149,791,949,431. The signed Act gives it N643,362,264,672. Personnel and overhead are unchanged to the naira. Of the N493.6bn increase, N474.5bn sits in 1,403 individually numbered project lines that the Bill does not contain.
  24. Public MoneyA Oyo State's 2026 budget reports its 2024 spending as exactly equal to its 2024 budget, on 7,483 lines out of 7,489 Every Nigerian budget book carries a column for what was actually spent and collected in a past year. In Oyo State's approved 2026 budget, the column headed 2024 Full Year Actuals is a copy of the column headed 2024 Revised Budget, line for line and kobo for kobo, across 162 pages. It is a published claim that every agency hit its target exactly.
  25. Public MoneyA Oyo budgeted N322.54bn of borrowing for 2026 and can name lenders for N247.25bn of it. Its own budget document prints the gap in red The state's Citizens' Budget carries a page of internal consistency checks. Two of them fail. The document reports total loans of N322,540,000,000 against domestic and foreign loans of N247,253,230,662, leaving a difference of N75,286,769,338 with no source named, and a grants line short by N599,230,662. Both figures are shaded red in the original.
  26. AccountabilityA Cross River added N9.35 trillion to its balance sheet on a valuation it performed itself, and its Auditor-General signed a clean opinion without mentioning it The state's 2025 audited accounts recognise N9,354,491,048,000 of previously unrecognised legacy assets, valued using what the note calls in-house technical expertise, with no depreciation charged. The state's entire expenditure that year was about N205bn. The Auditor-General certified a true and fair view and raised no observation on it.
  27. AccountabilityA Cross River's published 2025 audit stops in the middle of a sentence on page 65. Its certificate covers the accounts to page 80 The Auditor-General certifies that the consolidated financial statements are reproduced in his report from page 22 to page 80, and gives a special opinion on material he describes as being on page 81. The published document ends at printed page 65, part-way through note 17, on the words Mini Tractors Held for Distribution. Notes 18 to 33 are certified and absent, including the note that would explain the state's N9.35 trillion asset recognition.
  28. AccountabilityA Not one of Cross River's 24 statutory bodies has been externally audited. Tinapa Resort has never filed accounts at all The Auditor-General's 2025 report lists the state's parastatals with the periods for which they have submitted financial statements. Against all 24, the remark is identical: External audit not conducted. Obudu Ranch Resort last submitted for 2013. Tinapa Resort's row is blank in both columns, because the state cannot name a year for which it has ever filed.
  29. AccountabilityA Nigeria's signed 2026 Appropriation Act states its own total twice, and the two figures differ by N20 billion On page ii of the Act the President signed, the Arrangement of Sections gives the appropriation as N68,303,309,818,667. On page iii, the long title and section 1 both give N68,323,309,818,667. The Act sets out its four component heads in the same sentence, and they add up to the second figure exactly. The first understates the appropriation by twenty billion naira.
  30. AccountabilityA Oyo's Appropriation Law states two different capital figures in one sentence, under a certificate that it was compared word for word Section 3 of the Oyo State Appropriation Law 2026 appropriates capital expenditure of Five Hundred and Four Billion, Nine Hundred and Forty-Six Million in words, and N504,945,477,812.85 in figures on the same line. The two differ by one million naira. Immediately beneath, the Clerk of the House certifies that the printed impression has been carefully compared with the Law as passed and found to be a true and correct copy.
  31. AccountabilityA Nigeria's tax authority took its whole document archive offline. Its e-invoicing service got a redirect; the circulars did not firs.gov.ng no longer answers. Not a 404, not a redirect: the connection times out. With it went the official address of 291 archived documents, among them the signed Finance Act 2020, the transfer pricing regulations and their gazette, and the public notices taxpayers and courts cite by URL. The same agency's e-invoicing subdomain was given a clean redirect to its successor on the same transition.
  32. AccountabilityA INEC's document archive stopped serving in the last week of August 2026. A file that worked on the 26th returns 404 today A polling-unit collection report for the 2023 Kogi governorship election served continuously, with an unchanged content digest, at captures in 2023, 2024, 2025 and on 15 August 2026. It now returns 404. Across the commission's whole upload tree, successful captures stop between 26 and 31 August 2026. We hold an inventory of 3,371 archived documents from it; a live sample of ninety returned 404 ninety times.
  33. Dispatch Twenty-seven days, twenty posts. VERORECORD.COM opens on 1 October. I posted here for the first time on 1 September , with no name in this subreddit, no history, and no particular reason for anyone to read past the title. That was twenty posts and twenty-sev…
  34. PoliticsA The Presidency says this council does not exist. The budget Tinubu signed gives it a code and names it three times Vero opened the signed 2026 Appropriation Act and searched all 2,635 pages. The Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council - a body the Presidency has publicly called fake and non-existent - appears on three of them, under its own MDA code, 0111062001. The same reading corrects a figure widely reported, including in our own earlier account: the N1,302,978,784 is not the council’s allocation. It is a single vote it shares with another council.
  35. PoliticsB Atiku personally swore a 25-paragraph affidavit to bar Tinubu from 2027; INEC has moved to throw it out In suit FHC/ABJ/CS/1888/2026 before the Federal High Court in Abuja, Atiku Abubakar personally deposed a 25-paragraph affidavit alleging President Tinubu submitted a forged NYSC discharge certificate to INEC. INEC - named as third defendant - has asked the court to dismiss the suit as an abuse of process. The matter was adjourned to 28 September 2026.
  36. PoliticsA A court ordered Peter Obi's party struck from the register; INEC reopened its candidate portal anyway The Federal High Court in Abuja ordered INEC to cancel the registration of the Nigeria Democratic Congress and remove it from the register of political parties, finding it was never validly registered. Months earlier the NDC had ratified Peter Obi as its 2027 presidential candidate, and after the ruling INEC restored the party's access to its nomination portal. The records point in opposite directions.
  37. PoliticsA Six months after signing an N892bn Oyo budget, Makinde's government moved to lift it to N1.10tn Governor Seyi Makinde signed Oyo State's 2026 budget of N892.09bn into law on 23 December 2025. By 1 July 2026 the Oyo State House of Assembly had approved an N330bn realignment-and-supplementary package - N120bn from reallocated existing lines plus N210bn in new spending - pushing the 2026 budget to roughly N1.102tn, a rise of about 37% inside the fiscal year.
  38. PoliticsB Three courts, one verdict: how Sandy Onor's challenge to Cross River's 2023 governorship result failed at every level Onor asked a tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court to overturn Bassey Otu's win. Petition EPT/CR/Gov/2/2023 was struck out on 26 September 2023; the Supreme Court closed the matter on 12 January 2024. The record shows his case failed - not that anyone found him at fault.
  39. PoliticsA Cross River still carries Donald Duke’s Tinapa resort at N58.7bn, and is budgeting N8.5bn more for it in 2026 Vero downloaded Cross River State’s audited financial statements and its approved 2026 budget. The state values the resort its former governor built at N58,700,000,000 - unchanged for two years, with no revaluation gain - and has approved N8bn to renovate its hotel and N500m to build a water park there. Nineteen years on, Tinapa is still a line in the state’s books and still a line in its budget.
  40. PoliticsA The ECOWAS Court’s own journal records two cases over Sowore’s arrest and the order to delete his account Vero read the Official Journal of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. It registers an application over Omoyele Sowore’s arrest on 6 August 2025, seeking $100,000,000 in damages, and a second over a Department of State Services letter to X Corp demanding his account be deactivated. Both are registered filings, not judgments - and in the first, Sowore is not the person suing.
  41. PoliticsB Adewole Adebayo's paper trail is a candidacy, not a vote count, and the 2023 national number is still an open record The SDP flagbearer's documented record is clear on how he became a candidate twice over. What is not cleanly documented from a primary INEC source is how many votes he actually won in 2023 - a gap Vero states plainly rather than fills with second-hand arithmetic.
  42. PoliticsA What is on record for Action Alliance's 2027 candidate, Rufai Omo-Aje INEC lists the Ede businessman and AA national chairman as the party's presidential candidate. Beyond the candidacy and a stated platform, the personal record is thin.
  43. PoliticsA Action Democratic Party's 2027 pick: what the record shows about Abbas-Bin Aliyu A former Atiku aide is INEC's listed ADP candidate. The party's registration and history are documented; his own record is largely a self- and party-description.
  44. PoliticsA Action Peoples Party's Yusuf Kabiru is on the 2027 ballot; almost nothing else is documented INEC lists him as the APP candidate. Beyond that single fact and the party's registration, Vero found no verifiable public record.
  45. PoliticsA BOOT Party's Sunday Adenuga: a technocrat CV, told mostly by the party itself INEC lists the party chairman as its 2027 candidate. His professional biography is detailed but party-sourced; his public-office record is not established.
  46. PoliticsA The DLA's presidential candidate is on the INEC list, and the public record about him disagrees with itself A brand-new party, registered in February 2026, is fielding a US-based entrepreneur for president. What is documented is the party and the candidacy. The candidate's own name and even his party's full name appear differently across the sources that report him.
  47. PoliticsA A Labour Party faction has a 2027 presidential candidate, and which faction matters as much as the candidate Sunday Chibuzo Okereke is on INEC's final list as the Labour Party's presidential candidate. He was nominated by the Nenadi Usman-led wing of a party still contesting its own leadership after the 2023 Obi campaign.
  48. PoliticsA The YPP's 2027 candidate is a substitute nominee who came from the Labour Party Peter Ada Agada is on INEC's final list as the Young Progressives Party's presidential candidate, a replacement nominee who defected after being disqualified from a Labour Party primary. The party he now leads is the documented part of the story.
  49. PoliticsA The ZLP's 2027 candidate is the party's own founder, a veteran of Nigeria's earlier Labour Party Daniel Daberechukwu 'Dan' Nwanyanwu is on INEC's final list as the Zenith Labour Party's presidential candidate. Unlike most minor-party nominees, he has a long documented public record as a former Labour Party national chairman.
  50. PoliticsA Two women are on Nigeria's 2027 presidential ballot. Most published lists of the field leave both of them out INEC's signed final list names eighteen presidential candidates. The National Democratic Party's is Ada Elizabeth Fredrick Okwori, who is also the party's national chairman, by court order. She appears in almost none of the summaries of the 2027 field.
  51. PoliticsA The National Rescue Movement's candidate holds a doctorate, is 43, and is the second woman the 2027 candidate lists lose Okereke Nkem Esther appears at entry 12 of INEC's signed final list, with a PhD among the qualifications she filed. She is not the Okereke on the Labour Party ticket, and she is absent from most published accounts of the field.
  52. Dispatch It is time. - VERO RECORD.COM It is time. For weeks, you’ve waited. Some of you believed the record was coming. Some of you questioned whether it ever would. Some of you asked when, why the silence, and whether there was…
  53. Dispatch 7,000 forest guards were sworn in and promised salaries "immediately". Eight months later they say they aren't paid. I found where their money is. Fair warning *: this one is long, and it gets more technical as it goes. Read as far as the box with the budget line in it and then decide if those three lines don't stop you, nothing after …
  54. Dispatch Nigeria’s 2025 Budget Changed by N6.67 Trillion - The Government’s Own Reports Don’t Explain Why I searched a 2,635-page budget for “National Forest Guard.” It appeared once inside the President’s aircraft budget. I typed four words into Nigeria’s 2,635 page 2026 Appropriation Act: NATI…
  55. AccountabilityB The Court of Appeal's Ruling on Magu's EFCC Tenure Was Two Days Old and Still Unpublished When a Former Senate President Called It Vindication The Court of Appeal found Ibrahim Magu's five-year acting EFCC chairmanship unlawful on 21 September 2026. By 23 September the judgment text and its consequential orders had not been published anywhere, yet the ruling was already being cited in absolute terms in headlines and as political vindication by a former Senate President.
  56. PoliticsB Cross River's 2026 Budget Grew N181 Billion Between Presentation and Signature, With No Public Reconciliation As Cross River's House of Assembly completed a second upward review of the 2026 budget this month, state records show the figure being revised was itself never publicly reconciled with the far smaller budget Governor Bassey Otu presented eight months earlier.
  57. Public MoneyA Akwa Ibom's N1.17 Trillion Capital Budget Has One Line in Its Own Implementation Report The state government's own second-quarter 2026 budget report itemises, ministry by ministry, where N37 billion in health and education money went. For the N1.17 trillion capital budget around it, 74 per cent of the state's entire 2026 spending plan, the same report offers a single row and no further detail. Two years earlier, the same report ran 51 pages and broke down every ministry's capital spending. It now runs seven.
  58. PoliticsB Two Official Accounts of How a Disputed Council Entered Nigeria's 2026 Budget Have Not Been Reconciled In July 2026 the Budget Office told the House of Representatives that a N1.3bn line for the disputed "Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council" rested on genuine establishment approvals from named federal offices. In September a House ad hoc committee found the council's founding instrument forged and named officials inside those same offices as paid facilitators, a discrepancy no government body has addressed.
  59. Public MoneyB The Auditor-General's 2024 Report Is Cited at N1.34 Trillion in Federal Lapses. The Itemised Figures Published So Far Add to About N257bn Nigerian outlets have reported the Auditor-General's non-compliance report for 2024 at a headline of over N1.34tn. Re-adding every category actually named with a figure in that coverage produces roughly N257bn, about a sixth of the total, and no outlet has quoted the Auditor-General's letter using the N1.34tn figure directly.
  60. Public MoneyA The Budget Office Now Reports Nigeria's 2025 Amended Budget as N48.32 Trillion, N6.67 Trillion Below the Figure It Reported Three Months Earlier Two consecutive quarterly Budget Implementation Reports from the same federal office give different totals for the same enacted 2025 budget, and different actuals for the same two quarters. The later report also contains a financing table whose columns do not add to their own sub-total, by N296.43 billion.
  61. PoliticsA Nigeria's National Forest Guard Appears Twice in the 2026 Appropriation Act, and Its Larger Line Is Shared With the Presidential Air Fleet The enacted 2026 Appropriation Act names the National Forest Guard in exactly two places across 2,635 pages. The larger of the two is a single N283,850,000,000 Service Wide Vote line that also covers presidential aircraft logistics, so the sum appropriated to the guards cannot be read off the record.
  62. PoliticsA The Presidency Replaced One Quoted Sentence in Its Account of Tinubu's 2026 Budget Address With Three New Ones, Within 28 Hours of Publishing It State House published its report of President Bola Tinubu's 19 December 2025 budget address to the National Assembly, then changed the words it placed inside quotation marks. The replacement added a definition of who the state regards as terrorists, and the page carries no note that anything was changed.
  63. AccountabilityA FCCPC's Own Airtime-Lender Register Grew From Three Names to Nine While a Federal High Court Order Restrained the Regulations Behind It The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission told the public on 20 July 2026 that it suspended the DEON Regulations immediately on being served with a Federal High Court order in April. Its own published register of approved airtime and data lenders carried three names on 8 April 2026 and all nine it carries today by 10 May 2026.
  64. Dispatch Nigeria’s 2025 Budget Changed by N6.67 Trillion - The Government’s Own Reports Don’t Explain Why The numbers come directly from the Budget Office of the Federation . We compared its 2025 First, Second and Third Quarter Budget Implementation Reports and found that the same 2025 Amended B…
  65. AccountabilityB Nigeria's Oil-Marketer Debt to Its Petroleum Regulator Carries Three Different Totals Inside the Same Set of Official Records The Auditor-General's 2024 report puts NMDPRA's outstanding receivables from oil marketers at about N432bn. A separate, more recent tally for the same group of companies puts it at N327.53bn. The House of Representatives opened a public probe using the higher figure without addressing the N104bn gap between the two.
  66. Public MoneyA Nigeria's Open Contracting Portal Now Carries a N1,999,836,220 COVID-19 Line for University College Hospital Ibadan That Was Not on the Same Report in June 2023 The Bureau of Public Procurement's COVID-19 emergency procurement report gained a six-row block for University College Hospital Ibadan sometime between 5 June 2023 and 19 May 2024. One line in it, for molecular laboratory consumables delivered in seven days, is the largest single item in the entire national report.
  67. Dispatch ASK DR. VERO - Q&A A number of people have asked questions about Dr. Vero, VERO Record, the research, the sources behind the work, previous investigations and what comes next. Rather than answering these quest…
  68. Dispatch TINUBU FILES. 12 DAYS REMAINING. On October 1, as promised, VERO RECORD will publish the complete Tinubu Files more than 500 pages of documents, records, connections and research. This is not a teaser and it is not another …
  69. Dispatch TINUBU ORDERED A FORENSIC AUDIT OF THE SYSTEM. WE STARTED WITH HIS OWN BUDGET. In August, President Tinubu ordered a comprehensive forensic audit of IPPIS, federal agencies and the systems surrounding them. The stated goal was simple: verify which institutions have a l…
  70. Dispatch DON’T TRUST DR VERO. Check him. Someone recently asked how they could verify our authenticity. I’ve been thinking about that question because the answer says more about VERO than any biography could. We don’t want your tru…
  71. Dispatch WE FOLLOWED THE REFINERY MONEY. THE SAME NAMES KEPT COMING BACK. The EFCC showed us where some of the money allegedly ended up. We went backwards to find where it started. Two former refinery managing directors. Two separate EFCC cases. Port Harcourt and …
  72. Dispatch Sowore Says The Money Is There. The Numbers Tell A More Complicated Story. Sowore wasn’t getting a free pass either. We’ve looked at Tinubu, Atiku, Obi and others, and the standard stays the same. He has been especially vocal lately, so we went back through his own…
  73. Dispatch THE GOVERNMENT KNEW. THE BUDGET DIDN’T STOP. Nigeria has already heard the simple version of this story: a man allegedly created a fake presidential agency. But when we went back through the dates and documents, the more important ques…
  74. Dispatch THEY CAN LIMIT THE ACCOUNT. NOT THE RECORD. Something has changed here, and if you have been following closely, you probably noticed it too. Our reach has dropped. Some posts barely move. Comments sometimes do not seem to register pro…
  75. Dispatch THE FBI FILES AREN’T JUST REDACTED. THE COURT IS BEING SHOWN WHAT THE PUBLIC CAN’T SEE. This week, Tinubu’s Presidency told Nigerians to separate the actual US court case from political speculation. That part is correct. The case before Judge Beryl Howell is a civil Freedom of …
  76. Dispatch ATIKU SAID: BRING THE EVIDENCE This week, Atiku Abubakar responded to a new petition asking the EFCC to revisit allegations from his years as Vice-President. His response was straightforward: anyone with credible evidence…
  77. Dispatch Tinubu made us opposition. Obi made us APC. Apparently. When we started looking into Tinubu, some people assumed we must be working for the opposition. Then we opened the Obi files, and suddenly some of the same accusations changed direction: now…
  78. Dispatch Peter Obi told Nigerians to pray for politicians to stop stealing. So we checked Peter Obi. DON’T TRUST POLITICIANS? WE TOOK PETER OBI’S ADVICE. Some of you told me the Tinubu preview was too vanilla. Fair enough. You wanted more heat. So here it is. Peter Obi recently told Nigeria…
  79. Dispatch One Tinubu claim we couldn’t prove - and one thing we could Before October 1, I want to show you a small example of how the files actually work. One claim that kept coming up during the research was that Bola Tinubu was a CIA asset. We looked into it…
  80. Dispatch DR VERO - TODAY’S NIGERIAN HISTORY LESSON This one is a little different today. No politics. No investigations. No debates. Simply Nigerian history. Over a millennium ago long before the modern country of Nigeria existed , a fascina…

August 2026

  1. Dispatch Before October Begins, You Need to Read This Before the Files Begin Some of the comments under my first posts made me think. People asked whether releasing a major dossier this close to an election was partisan. Others called it propag…
  2. Dispatch Before October 1st: Who Is Dr. Vero? You asked for it. You’re getting it. Before the Tinubu Files go live, I want to make one thing clear: who I am, why I’m doing this, and what Dr. Vero actually stands for. I am Nigerian, but …
  3. Dispatch THE TINUBU FILES Dear Nigerians, Are you ready?