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

On Friday, 4 September 2026, the Oyo State Government posted figures on its official feedback account on X about gratuities, the lump sums owed to civil servants when they retire. Leadership newspaper reported the post the next day. According to that report, the state government had paid "over N90 billion towards clearing the backlog of unpaid gratuities inherited on May 29, 2019, and accumulated gratuities as of July 1, 2026". The 33 local government councils had paid about N43bn more, for a combined N133,087,885,264. The post came three months after Governor Seyi Makinde was presented as the presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement on 30 May 2026. Vero Record has not seen the post itself. The figures here are as Leadership and NaijaMetro reported them, and we grade them B.

The governor has also given a date for finishing the job. In late February 2026 National Accord quoted him as saying: "Our administration has already cleared the N25 billion backlog of gratuity. I have now approved N3 billion monthly to clear all remaining gratuities so that we owe no retirees by the end of my administration on 29th May 2027." On 26 February a statement signed by the Commissioner for Information, Dotun Oyelade, gave the Commissioner for Establishments and Training, Professor Salihu Adelabu, as saying that the monthly gratuity allocation had gone up from N1bn to N3bn from January 2026. The same statement acknowledged that some officers who qualified for payment in 2019 had still not been paid.

The state keeps its own record of these obligations. Vero Record downloaded and read the General Purpose Financial Statements of the Oyo State Government for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. They are prepared by the Office of the Accountant-General, and the copies for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 carry an Auditor-General's certificate or opinion. Every set contains a line headed "Pension and gratuity due". In the 2019 statements, the figure for 31 December 2018 is N24,825,840,839.49. Makinde was sworn in five months later. The figure then reads N30,075,100,160.93 for 2019, N29,125,589,895.59 for 2020, N29,935,642,098.27 for 2021, N35,306,517,265.31 for 2022 (from the comparative column of the 2023 statements), N40,054,371,665.50 for 2023 and N39,188,422,471.90 for 2024.

By Vero Record's own arithmetic (grade C), the amount the state recorded as owed in pensions and gratuities at the end of 2024 was N14,362,581,632.41 higher than at the end of 2018, an increase of about 58 per cent. The statements do not split the figure between gratuities inherited in 2019 and gratuities owed to people who retired later. They also do not separate pension arrears from gratuity arrears. What they show is the total, and on the state's own books the total is larger than the one Makinde inherited.

The statements also list the gratuity the state actually paid out of its Consolidated Revenue Fund. For 2019 they record N1,374,454,737.51 through the Ministry of Finance and Budget and N2,014,213,212.45 through the Office of the Head of Service, a total of N3,388,667,949.96 for the year. That year includes the five months before Makinde took office. The 2020 statements record N62,793,923.80 through the Ministry of Finance and N2,320,000,000.00 through the Ministry of Establishments and Training, a total of N2,382,793,923.80. For 2021 they record N266,887,225.00 and N2,460,043,028.78, a total of N2,726,930,253.78. The 2023 statements give a 2022 comparative of N956,150,000.00 for gratuity in their table by economic code. They put gratuity at N2,789,243,227.25 for 2023, and the 2024 summary table gives N4,500,000,000.00.

Added together (grade C), that comes to N16,743,785,354.79 over six years, or N13,355,117,404.83 if 2019 is left out. The second figure matches what the government itself was saying in mid-2025. At an inter-ministerial briefing on Monday, 7 July 2025, Commissioner Adelabu said that "since the inception of the administration in May 2019, over N13 billion has been disbursed to settle accumulated arrears of gratuities". He was speaking about retirees from the mainstream civil service and secondary school teachers, and said 7,250 people had benefited. Tribune and Newscoven reported his remarks. He also said the monthly gratuity fund had risen from N206m in 2019 to N1bn in May 2025, with a separate N1bn a month for retired primary school teachers and local government staff.

That is where the numbers stop agreeing. In July 2025 the commissioner said just over N13bn had been paid. As of 1 July 2026, the September post put the state's payments at over N90bn. That would mean roughly N77bn paid in about twelve months, or around N6.4bn a month. The government's own announced allocation for that period was N1bn a month, rising to N3bn a month from January 2026. We also tried a generous version of the sum (grade C). We took everything the accounts record up to the end of 2024 (N16.74bn) and assumed the state paid N1bn in every month of 2025 and N3bn in every month from January to June 2026, a further N30bn. The total is about N46.74bn, roughly half of the N90bn announced. Vero Record could not reconcile the September figure with the state's accounts or with its own stated monthly allocations.

The 2024 statements also show how much of the gratuity budget was spent. The table "Analysis of Consolidated Revenue Fund Charges" puts gratuity at N4,500,000,000.00 paid against N11,240,000,000.00 budgeted, about 40 per cent. The largest single line, gratuity through the Ministry of Establishments and Training, received N3,710,700,000.00 of a N10,000,000,000.00 provision. The same table shows the state spending more than budgeted on debt that year: N17,848,939,968.60 on foreign loan servicing against a budget of N10,550,000,000.00, and N16,606,965,569.47 on internal loan servicing against N13,000,000,000.00. The record shows those choices. It does not show why they were made.

The way the statements present the retirees' bill has also changed. In the 2019, 2020 and 2021 statements, "Pension and gratuity due" appears both in the contingent liabilities note and on the main Statement of Assets and Liabilities, where it is counted in "Total other liabilities" (N34,393,024,102.75 at the end of 2021). In the 2023 and 2024 statements, the same line on the main statement shows a dash in both years' columns, and so does "Total other liabilities". Note 19, headed "Contingent liabilities as at year end", lists "Pension and gratuity due (Ref. to SPL VIII)" as 0.00 for 2024 and 2023. The supplementary schedule it points to, on page 78 of the 2024 statements, lists under "Contingent liabilities as at year ended 31st December, 2024" a pension and gratuity due of N39,188,422,471.90 for 2024 and N40,054,371,665.50 for 2023. So one document carries two figures for the same line: nil on the balance sheet and in Note 19, and N39.19bn in the schedule.

The 2023 statements, which follow the same pattern, contain a certificate signed on 11 June 2024 by Olatunji Kunle Daramola, Acting Auditor-General of Oyo State. It says the statements "fairly reflect the Financial Position and State of Affairs of the Oyo State Government of Nigeria as at 31st December, 2023". The 2024 statements were signed by the Accountant-General, Kikelomo A. Adegoke, on 19 May 2025, and were published on the OpenStates portal in August 2026 under an "audited" title. The copy Vero Record read contains no Auditor-General's certificate. Under IPSAS cash-basis accounting, which the statements say they follow, obligations like these are disclosed in notes rather than booked as cash transactions. That may explain the dash. It does not explain why Note 19 gives zero while the schedule it cites gives N39.19bn.

The government's figure for what Makinde inherited has also changed from one statement to the next. On 1 June 2020 the state's website reported the governor saying the state had "a backlog of N26 billion unpaid gratuities for 6,274 pensioners". It said the monthly allocation had risen from N100m to N180m from June 2019, and that N1.908bn had been paid in the previous year. On 25 April 2021 the same website carried a release that put the inherited gratuity at "about #56billion". That release said N11.7bn had been paid, "an average of over #500million naira every month", but in a later paragraph it gave the monthly allocation as N180m from June 2019 and N235m from January 2021. The accounts' figure of N24.83bn at the end of 2018 is close to the first estimate. The N56bn figure may include local government and primary school retirees, whose gratuities are not in the state's accounts. The release does not say so.

The record does not establish that any money was misapplied, and Vero Record makes no such suggestion. There are several possible explanations for the gap, and the published documents do not settle between them. The N90bn may count gratuities that parastatals, tertiary institutions and hospitals pay from their own budgets, which would not appear in the Consolidated Revenue Fund lines. It may count death benefits, pension arrears or contributions to the new contributory pension scheme. It may use a different start date or a different definition from the commissioner's N13bn. Payments in 2025 and 2026 may also have been much larger than the announced allocations. The 2025 accounts have not been published, and the state has not released the breakdown behind the N90bn figure.

The pension and gratuity figures in the statements are also compiled "according to MDAs". They depend on what ministries and agencies report and may lag behind actual payments. The local government side is a separate ledger. The N43bn the councils say they paid is outside the documents examined here, including a N3bn payment the Local Government Staff Pension Board began in July 2026. Pensioners' disputes this year have been about more than gratuities. In August 2026 the Nigeria Union of Pensioners directed members to protest at LAUTECH and the Emmanuel Alayande University of Education. The governor had ordered pension adjustments that the two institutions had not implemented, ThisDay and Peoples Gazette reported.

The distance between the claim and the record matters more now because the claim has moved from state politics to national politics. Makinde's team presents his record in Oyo as evidence of what he would do for the country, and the state's handling of retirees has been one of the most repeated parts of that record. On the state's own books, the answer to the question "how much does Oyo owe its retirees?" at the end of 2024 was N39,188,422,471.90. That is more than when Makinde arrived, and the figure dates from about two and a half years before 29 May 2027, the date by which he has promised that no retiree will be owed.

Vero Record is putting these questions to the Oyo State Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Establishments and Training, the Office of the Accountant-General and the Makinde presidential campaign. How was the figure of over N90bn calculated, which heads of expenditure does it include, and how much was paid in each year? Why do Note 19 and the face of the 2023 and 2024 statements show nil pension and gratuity due while the schedule shows N40.05bn and N39.19bn? And what was the balance on 1 July 2026? No response had been received when this article was prepared. Any reply will be published in full.

Every figure in this article can be checked. The 2024 statements are on the OpenStates portal. The 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 statements were published on Oyo State Government websites and are preserved in the Internet Archive. The key pages in the 2024 statements are 18 (Statement No. 2), 40 (Note 19), 64 (Consolidated Revenue Fund charges) and 78 (contingent liabilities schedule). The 2020 and 2021 government releases are still on oyostate.gov.ng.

What this rests on

Five sets of Oyo State General Purpose Financial Statements (2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024), downloaded and read at the relevant pages (grade A). Two Oyo State Government releases on oyostate.gov.ng dated 1 June 2020 and 25 April 2021 (grade A for what the government said). Press reports of the September 2026 N90bn/N133.09bn post, the July 2025 N13bn statement and the February 2026 statements (grade B). Vero Record's own additions and comparisons, shown line by line and marked grade C.

What this does not establish

How the N90bn figure was calculated and what it includes. Payments made in 2025 and the first half of 2026 (the 2025 accounts are not published). Whether parastatals and tertiary institutions paid gratuities outside the Consolidated Revenue Fund lines. How the N39.19bn splits between inherited and newer gratuities, and between pensions and gratuities. The balance owed on 1 July 2026. Why Note 19 gives nil while the schedule it cites gives N39.19bn. Whether the 2024 statements have been audited. Nothing in the record suggests misappropriation, and Vero Record makes no such claim.