Ondo added N244.97bn to its 2026 budget in September. Its own documents put the cash it carried into the year anywhere from N159.20bn to N277.32bn

On Tuesday, 8 September 2026, the Ondo State Government said it was raising its 2026 budget from N524.411 billion to N769.384 billion, an increase of N244.973 billion, or 46.7 per cent. The announcement came in a statement after the State Executive Council meeting, signed by the governor's Chief Press Secretary, Prince Ebenezer Adeniyan, and posted on the government's official X account. On Friday, 18 September, the Ondo State House of Assembly passed the revised budget at N775.518 billion, as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria and carried by Real Media and The Guild. That is N6.134 billion more than the figure the government had sent. The press reports of the passage do not say what the extra N6.134 billion pays for, and Vero Record has not seen the revised budget. Our account of the vote is therefore graded B.

The government statement quotes the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Olaolu Akindolire. He said the review was "aimed at realigning provisions, addressing funding gaps and improving implementation in the remaining months of the year". Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa had ordered at least five kilometres of road in each of the 18 local government areas before the end of 2026, a minimum of 90 kilometres in total. The revised budget, he said, also adds money for the Adegbola to St. Mathias flyover on Oba Adesida Road in Alagbaka, Akure, and for water and healthcare, "with anticipated development financing expected to support projects". Beyond that reference to development financing for water and health, the statement does not say how the N244.973 billion will be funded: through new revenue, new borrowing or cash the state already holds.

That last option depends on one figure, the cash the state carried from 2025 into 2026. The 2026 Approved Budget, a publication of the Ondo State Budget Office, estimated it at N159,204,020,210.00. The governor signed that budget into law on 29 December 2025, according to the government's September statement as reported by ThisDay and to The Guardian's report at the time. The budget called the figure a "Roll-Over Fund" and counted it as 30.4 per cent of the year's revenue. Vero Record downloaded and read that document. Its summary table also reports the state's 2025 performance from January to September, and in that column it shows a closing balance of N233,064,991,226.49. So the budget's roll-over estimate was N73.86 billion below the balance the same document reported three months before the year ended. That subtraction is ours (C). A September balance can fall by December, and the document does not explain how the estimate was reached.

The state's quarterly Budget Implementation Reports for the first and second quarters of 2026, also from the Budget Office, record a different opening balance: N218,124,823,378.45. The second-quarter report says this is 137.0 per cent of the budgeted figure. By its own reckoning that is N58,920,803,168.45 more than the approved budget expected. Vero Record read both reports.

The Accountant-General's consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025 give a larger number again. Note 22 of those statements puts cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2025 at N277,322,639,312.36, against N163,512,645,607.80 a year earlier. The cash flow statement accounts for the rise as a net inflow of N113,809,993,704.56. Note 22 breaks the total into four parts: N92,852,108,499.51 in Treasury accounts of the Consolidated Revenue Fund; N138,659,861,011.96 labelled "Other Current balances (Reconciled Figure)"; N12,102,160,383.63 in MDA current accounts; and N33,708,509,417.26 held by entities the note calls non-state government business entities, which a summary page lists as non-state and tertiary institutions. Vero Record re-added the four parts, and they come to the stated total. The N138.66 billion line has no counterpart in the 2024 column. A schedule further into the document, headed "Reconciled balances as at 31st December, 2025", spreads it across 111 bank accounts in two columns. The column headed "Adjusted cash book balances" totals N133,931,168,825.95. The column headed "Reconciled bank balances" totals N138,659,861,011.96, and that is the figure Note 22 uses. The difference is N4,728,692,186.01 (our subtraction, C). A summary page later in the same document labels the N138.66 billion "Reconciled cash book balances". The document does not explain the gap between the two columns.

A newer document gives yet another figure. The Ondo State Government 2025 Citizens' Accountability Report carries the publication date 2 September 2026 on its cover, and the Office of the Accountant-General's website added it on 9 September, a day after the budget increase was announced. It says the state had N600,623,802,383 available in 2025, opening balance included, and spent N335,109,876,679. Vero Record checked the revenue figure against the audited accounts. The statement comparing budget with actual gives revenue of N430,361,350,451.33. Add loans of N18,067,221,931.62 and the opening balance of N152,195,230,000 and the total is N600,623,802,382.95, matching the report. On the report's own totals, then, counting the opening balance, N265,513,925,704 more came in during 2025 than went out. That subtraction is ours (C).

The Budget Office's fourth-quarter report for 2025, issued in January 2026, gives other totals for the same year. It records total revenue including the opening balance of N551,535,009,156.89 and total expenditure of N310,093,374,587.96, which leaves N241,441,634,568.93 (our subtraction, C). The report says that variances in earlier quarterly figures "were corrected to align this report with the Office of the Accountant General's report". Even so, its revenue is N49,088,793,226.11 lower than the Accountant-General's, and its spending N25,016,502,091.04 lower. Most of the revenue gap is in receipts other than federation and tax revenue. The Budget Office report shows N53.73 billion of aid and capital development fund receipts. The Accountant-General's figures show N90.80 billion of aid, loans and other capital receipts, a difference of N37.07 billion. Internally generated revenue accounts for another N12.02 billion: N45.63 billion against N57.66 billion. On the spending side, other recurrent costs differ by N14.43 billion (N87.66 billion against N102.09 billion) and capital spending by N8.24 billion (N122.85 billion against N131.10 billion). These component differences are our arithmetic (C), and they add up to the two totals.

Taken together, Ondo's own documents describe the money carried from 2025 into 2026 five ways. The approved budget estimated N159.20 billion. The 2026 quarterly reports recorded N218.12 billion. The Budget Office's 2025 year-end totals imply N241.44 billion. The Accountant-General's 2025 totals imply N265.51 billion. The audited balance sheet shows cash of N277.32 billion. The first, second and fifth are printed in the documents. The third and fourth are our subtractions. These records appear inconsistent, and Vero Record is tracing why.

The strongest innocent explanation is that the documents measure different things. Cash on a balance sheet includes money that a budget cannot spend freely: the N33.71 billion held by tertiary institutions and similar bodies, and balances tied to loans and donor projects. Take the N33.71 billion out of the audited total and N243.61 billion remains, within N2.17 billion of the Budget Office's year-end figure. That still leaves N25,489,306,516.65 between the N243.61 billion and the N218.12 billion the 2026 reports used as the opening balance (our arithmetic, C). None of the documents Vero Record read reconciles the audited cash figure with the budget's opening balance.

The second-quarter report for 2026 also shows how much of the original budget had been spent before the increase. It covers January to June and was issued in July. Total expenditure was N191,102,282,584.78, or 36.4 per cent of the N524.41 billion budget. Capital spending was N88,739,945,062.40, or 29.2 per cent of the N303.58 billion capital budget. With the opening balance included, the report's revenue for the half year was N433,735,681,017.68. Revenue minus expenditure on those figures leaves N242,633,398,432.90 at 30 June (our subtraction, C). The September increase of N244.973 billion is close to that sum. The record does not establish that the one is meant to fund the other. The report also notes that two FAAC lines, Exchange Gain and the NLNG dividend, budgeted at N45,955,020,571 between them, had brought in nothing by June, and that "expectations from these votes would be addressed in the upcoming review of the budget".

Ondo went the other way a year earlier. According to the Citizens' Accountability Report, the 2025 budget of N698.659 billion was "revised downward and signed on 13th November, 2025" to N489.998 billion, and the state then spent N335.11 billion, or 68 per cent of the reduced figure. Capital spending came in at 53 per cent. The report gives the size of that cut as N208.961 billion. Subtracting its own two totals, N698,659,496,000 less N489,998,360,173, gives N208,661,135,827, which is N300 million less than the report states.

The State Auditor-General, Sunday Omoniyi Adegoke, signed his report on the 2025 accounts on 8 June 2026. His opinion is qualified. The statements give a true and fair view "except for" a limitation: not all legacy assets and liabilities had been brought into account, as IPSAS 1 requires. The report also says that the records of two accounts at First Bank, "Excess Crude Refund" (account 2036461895) and "ODSG Reserve Account" (account 2045325658), "were not made available to Audit for scrutiny", and asks the Accountant-General for a written explanation. Both account numbers appear in the schedule of reconciled balances on page 219 of the financial statements. The Excess Crude Refund account is listed there with N18,641,153,326.73 in both columns, so it forms part of the N138.66 billion in Note 22. The balance cells for the ODSG Reserve Account at First Bank are blank. Neither document says how the N18.64 billion balance was confirmed without the records the auditor asked for. On debt, the auditor says the State Debt Management Office did not supply its debt files or its agreements with lenders, "hence, Audit could not confirm the figure reported through the records." He also reports interest and charges of N1,241,740,739.08 in 2025 on an account at Zenith Bank named "ODSG Excess Crude Secured", leaving it N2,879,661,365.35 overdrawn at year end.

At the Assembly, the chairman of the Committee on Finance and Appropriation, Oluwole Ogunmolasuyi, said the Ondo State Internal Revenue Service was not working in step with other government bodies to meet the approved 2026 revenue budget, according to the NAN report. The second-quarter report records something different for the agency. Against a half-year target of N14,813,304,652.50, it shows the service collecting N19,839,516,158.08, or 133.9 per cent. The committee may have meant the full-year target or something else. The press reports do not say.

Vero Record looked for the revised 2026 budget and did not find it. It is not among the Ondo documents on openstates.ng, the BudgIT-run archive where the state's approved 2026 budget and its 2026 quarterly reports are posted. It is not in the media library of the Office of the Accountant-General's website, where the 2025 accounts and the Citizens' Accountability Report sit. The quarterly reports name www.ondobudget.org as the Budget Office's publication site. On 2 October 2026 that address returned a hosting company's "Account Suspended" page, although the Wayback Machine shows it serving the ministry's home page on 11 July 2026. A second ministry address, mepbondostate.org, did not respond.

These documents do not establish that any money is missing or misused, and Vero Record makes no such claim. Every difference set out above could have an accounting explanation: restricted balances, timing, reclassification or late corrections. None of the documents gives one. They also do not show how the N244.973 billion increase, or the further N6.134 billion added by the Assembly, is to be funded, or how the new money is split between recurrent and capital spending. Vero Record had not put these questions to the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, the Office of the Accountant-General or the House of Assembly before publication. Any response will be added to this report.

What this rests on

Seven primary documents downloaded and read: Ondo's 2026 Approved Budget; the Budget Office's Q4 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 Budget Implementation Reports; the Accountant-General's 2025 consolidated financial statements, including Note 22 and the Annex I schedule of reconciled balances; the Auditor-General's 2025 report, signed 8 June 2026; and the 2025 Citizens' Accountability Report, published 2 September 2026. Also the government's own statement of 8 September 2026. Press reports (NAN via Real Media, The Guild, ThisDay) cover the 18 September passage. The Guardian's report of 29 December 2025 covers the original budget's signing. Our subtractions are marked C.

What this does not establish

The revised 2026 budget itself: its revenue side, how the N244.973bn is funded, how it splits between recurrent and capital, and what the Assembly's extra N6.134bn covers. Why the audited 2025 cash of N277.32bn, the Accountant-General's implied N265.51bn and the Budget Office's implied N241.44bn differ from the N218.12bn opening balance used in 2026. Why the reconciled-balances schedule's bank column exceeds its adjusted cash-book column by N4.73bn. How the N18.64bn balance on the Excess Crude Refund account was confirmed when the auditor says its records were not made available, and why the ODSG Reserve Account at First Bank shows no balance. Any wrongdoing: none is alleged. Right of reply has not yet been sought.