Enjoyment Master: How Finance Director Abba Yarema In Federal Ministry of Transport Took N223 Million For Himself

Secrets Reporters

Twenty-seven times between September 2023 and December 2025, the Federal Ministry of Transportation paid Abba Goni Yarema. The payments did not go to a contractor, a consultant or a supplier. They went into the name of the officer himself, and together they came to N223,384,087.85. The ministry’s own payment details attach no departmental title to his name. In the only lines that describe his function at all, four payments of 25 October 2024, the details call the role he filled that day “project accountant” for the post-conference activities of the National Council on Transportation. Across the other twenty-three payments, the records carry his bare name against estacodes, airfares, hall hire, refreshments, honorariums and publicity money.

SecretsReporters examined the official payment records of the ministry for the tenure of Senator Sa’idu Ahmed Alkali, who was sworn in as Minister of Transportation on 21 August 2023 and resigned on 31 March 2026. After salaries, taxes and transfers into the ministry’s own accounts were set aside, the reportable payments of the tenure stand at 243 records worth N69,058,851,829.55. Four railway beneficiaries took 96.3 percent of that value. Yet two of every three records in the book were paid not to companies at all but to named individuals: 163 records worth N1,258,678,826.02 moved through the personal names of officers.

Inside that traffic sits a defined channel of advances. Seventy-four records worth N576,141,618.21 are described in the payment details as personal advances, non-personal advances, out-of-pocket expenses and project accountant releases to named officers. The Financial Regulations under which federal ministries operate treat an advance as temporary money charged against the officer who receives it, to be retired promptly with receipts and vouchers, and an officer carrying unretired advances is not to be loaded with fresh ones. The records show the opposite rhythm. The same names drew fresh advances month after month, year after year, across the whole tenure.

The flat sum tells the story in one figure. Exactly N5,000,000 was paid 50 times in the tenure, N250,000,000 in total, to 14 beneficiaries. Thirty of those fifty payments landed on one day, 25 October 2024, the day of the ministry’s National Council on Transportation conference, a day that carries 52 records in the payment book, 41 of them to individuals. Within single vouchers the sum multiplied by slicing. Voucher 1001223237 carried eight identical lines of N5,000,000: three to Yarema, three to another officer, Nwosu Obinna Micheal, and two to Etolue Patrick Uchenna, every line described in the same words as out-of-pocket expenses and duty tour allowance for the same conference. Voucher 1001223246 carried four more identical lines of N5,000,000, all of them to Yarema. In one day, seven payments of N5,000,000 each, N35,000,000, entered his name across two vouchers. The sums bought conference logistics, halls, refreshments and transport, services the Public Procurement Act 2007 requires ministries to obtain through procurement processes and contracts, not through identical personal releases repeated line after line on one voucher.

Yarema’s first payment of the tenure came on 18 September 2023, a non-personal advance of N9,027,000 to host an event, covering transport allowance for participants, honorarium for resource persons, stationery and production of the communique. Twenty-four of his twenty-seven payments fall on conference and workshop logistics. On 10 September 2024, voucher 1001209575 paid him the same N5,000,000 three times in three identical lines for the hiring of a hall, projectors, refreshments and contingency for a stakeholder engagement. The Financial Regulations permit advances for defined official purposes; they do not contemplate the same advance, for the same purpose, on the same day, paid three times over to the same officer.

Other officers’ money also passed through his hands. On 3 September 2024 the ministry paid him N8,671,317.60 twice, two identical payments for five days of estacode, participation fee, airfare and visa fee for a London conference on budgetary developments and reforms, one of the two lines expressly marked “in favour of O. R. Jumbo”. Three payments marked “in favour of Adeleye Adeoye” followed: N7,726,712 on 19 December 2024, then N11,320,429 and N13,076,989 on 26 February 2025, for meetings in South Africa and a training course in Abidjan. On the same February day, N18,778,815 was paid to Yarema for a study exchange programme “in favour of” another officer, Ashade F. Estacode and duty tour allowance are personal entitlements under the Financial Regulations, payable to the officer who travels; paying one officer’s entitlement into a colleague’s name breaks the direct line between the money and the officer accountable for it.

On 26 February 2025 alone, five payments entered Yarema’s name, totalling N69,546,233: two non-personal advances of N10,635,000 and N15,735,000 for stakeholder forums, and the three payments for Adeoye and Ashade. On 9 October 2025, two lines on a single voucher, 1001335461, paid him N10,000,000 and N6,000,000, both described as payment for the publicity of the achievements of the ministry and coverage of the minister’s visit to a train derailment site, both marked “in favour of Gift Osima”. N16,000,000 for media coverage was paid to an officer of the ministry rather than to any media organisation, although publicity is a procured service and the Public Procurement Act 2007 assigns such spending to contracts with service providers.

The machine had other regulars. Nwosu Obinna Michael took 21 payments worth N149,121,651.25, paid under two different orders of his own name, “Nwosu Obinna Micheal” on 12 payments worth N88,413,889.25 and “Obinna Nwosu” on 9 payments worth N60,707,762.00, a split that fragments his total in any review conducted by name. Mohammed Bello Aliu took 11 payments worth N64,756,201.00, including four identical lines of N5,000,000 on one voucher, 1001231689, on 14 November 2024, described as project accountant releases. Yarema’s last payment of the period came on 31 December 2025, N5,642,000 described as transport, lunch and dinner to enable the officers for the closure of the year 2025, three months before the minister resigned.

The records examined by SecretsReporters carry the releases in full. What they show is a ministry whose flagship business was railway construction measured in billions, running a parallel traffic in which public money for halls, meals, tickets, honorariums and publicity moved again and again into the names of its own officers, in flat sums, in identical slices, and in other officers’ entitlements, contrary to the Financial Regulations that govern advances and retirements and to the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007, which obliges every ministry to manage public resources prudently. At the centre of that traffic stands one name, paid 27 times: Abba Goni Yarema, N223,384,087.85.

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