Not one of Cross River's 24 statutory bodies has been externally audited. Tinapa Resort has never filed accounts at all

The table appears under Observation 1, Non-Submission of Financial Statements by Statutory Bodies, at printed pages 34 and 35 of the 2025 annual report. It has five columns: serial number, parastatal, period of accounts submitted, period of accounts outstanding, and remarks.

Obudu Ranch Resort: submitted 2013, outstanding 2014 to 2025. Cross River State Water Board: submitted 2017, outstanding 2018 to 2025. Management Development Institute: 2015, outstanding 2016 to 2025. Cross River Property Investment Limited: 2018, outstanding 2019 to 2025. Bureau of Public Private Partnership: 2017, outstanding 2018 to 2025. CRUTECH, the state university: 2022, outstanding 2023 to 2025.

Tinapa Resort, at number 20, has a dash in the submitted column and a dash in the outstanding column. The state cannot state a period for which the resort has filed, because there is none to state.

In the remarks column, all twenty-four rows carry the same four words: External audit not conducted.

The Auditor-General states the consequence himself. Under Risk: the statutory bodies may not have prepared their Annual Financial Statement as required by law, and lack of accountability in government fund expended. Under Recommendation: all statutory bodies that have not submitted their Audited Financial Statements to the Office of the Auditor-General should explain why they should not be sanctioned.

This is a disclosure, not a concealment, and that distinction should be kept. The Auditor-General is reporting the failure, in his own report, in plain terms, with a recommendation attached. A state that publishes this is doing more than one that quietly omits it.

It also puts an earlier finding in context. Cross River carries Tinapa in its consolidated accounts as a controlled entity and, in the 2024 accounts, at a value of N58.7bn. The entity carried at that value in the state's books has never submitted accounts of its own for any year.

What the record establishes is that the entire parastatal layer of Cross River State government, twenty-four bodies holding public assets and spending public money, stands outside external audit, and that the state's own auditor says so.

What this rests on

The report was downloaded from the Office of the Auditor-General and read by Vero. The table is reproduced from the printed pages.

What this does not establish

It does not establish that any of these bodies is insolvent, dormant or has lost money, and non-submission of accounts is not evidence of theft. It does not establish why the submissions stopped. The Auditor-General is disclosing the failure rather than hiding it, and nothing here attributes wrongdoing to him or to any named official.