THE NUMBERS THAT WERE CONVENIENTLY LEFT OUT
By Olaitan Adesina
It is sadly hilarious when an administration suddenly discovers the beauty of numbers when it is time to celebrate itself.
Five hundred Dangote investors. One thousand businesses for solar intervention. Six thousand new workers employed. One thousand political aides. Thousands of roads. Thousands of beneficiaries. Beautiful numbers.
But there is one small problem with this festival of numbers: who is paying for all this?
Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa has announced plans to buy Dangote shares for five hundred young entrepreneurs and provide solar support to one thousand small businesses. Perhaps these are private gifts from the Governor’s pocket and not public interventions. Otherwise, the obvious question is: where is the money coming from?
Is there an appropriation for the Dangote investment in the 2026 Ondo State Budget? Is there a budgetary provision for the solar installations for private businesses? If these expenditures are not specifically provided for in the appropriation, under what legal authority will public money be committed to them? And if they are being funded through an existing budget head, which one?
These questions are not asked with mischievous intent. They are basic questions of public finance bordering on transparency and accountability. A governor cannot simply announce at an entrepreneurs’ summit that taxpayers’ money will be used to help young entrepreneurs become shareholders in a private conglomerate and expect everyone to applaud without asking questions. Public money does not materialize from an earthen pot in a secret room. It must be appropriated, authorised and properly accounted for.
The irony becomes even more interesting when we examine the government’s priorities. The administration found money to appoint about one thousand aides, yet state-owned universities have been shutdown for weeks due to disputes over salaries and implementation of agreements. So the question becomes painfully simple: when there is money to buy shares and install solar systems for private businesses, why does government suddenly discover that resources are scarce when it comes to fundamental public institutions?
When schools need teachers, hospitals need properly deployed professional personnel, universities need sustainable funding and workers are demanding what they are owed, the Aiyedatiwa government suddenly discovers austerity. But the moment an initiative with attractive political optics comes along, the arithmetic becomes creative and the magic earthen pot starts “vomiting” money.
Healthcare provides another uncomfortable comparison. The government has announced the recruitment of about one thousand health professionals, including doctors, nurses, midwives, laboratory scientists and community health extension workers. Yet there are concerns about Community Health Extension Workers being deployed into roles in secondary healthcare facilities traditionally performed by nurses. Community health workers have their place. Nurses have theirs. You do not solve a professional manpower problem by blurring professional boundaries simply because one cadre is cheaper. If government is trying to cut costs, let it say so. But that explanation becomes difficult to reconcile with the apparent availability of funds to buy shares in Dangote, provide solar installations to private enterprises, and pay a thousand Special Assistants over ₦600,000-₦700,000 each monthly.
There’s another number that mysteriously disappeared from the celebrated arithmetic: ₦139 billion! That is the reported potential cost attached to the Oba Adesida Road Flyover project. Yet an entire essay about the “problems and prospects of number” (sic) somehow manages not to mention the number attached to one of the administration’s biggest infrastructure projects. Why? Is ₦139 billion an embarrassing number? Perhaps that is the number the governor’s communications team does not want the people counting. Because once you put ₦139 billion on the table, people will naturally begin asking questions: What exactly does it cover? What is the financing structure? What is the final contract sum? What is the project completion timeline? How much has been paid? And what is the opportunity cost?
These are legitimate questions, especially when public resources are finite and government has competing obligations. The truth is that numbers do not become impressive merely because they are large. But the real question is what are the priorities behind these numbers, where is the money coming from, and who authorised the spending?
That is the arithmetic of responsible government. And unlike biblical multiplication, public money does not multiply by miracle. Somebody must appropriate it. Somebody must spend it. And ultimately, somebody must account for it, if not now, then in the future.
So when government tells us to admire the numbers, we have a moral duty to ask about the numbers it conveniently left out. Because sometimes, what is hidden is more than what is revealed.
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****Olaitan Adesina is the author of Agidigbo: Soliloquy in Verse. He writes from Ijapo Estate, Akure.
