Governor Nasir Idris’ administration in Kebbi State has pushed back against criticism of its 2025 budget, arguing that the opposition’s focus on the gap between projected and realised revenue confuses an approved budget with money actually available to government.
Ibrahim Abubakar Jombali, Special Adviser on Public Enlightenment and Orientation to Governor Idris, made the argument in a strongly worded response to an earlier essay by Bello Abdullahi questioning the implementation of Kebbi’s ₦580 billion 2025 budget.
Jombali accused Abdullahi of presenting a political argument as fiscal analysis and argued that the figures cited in the criticism do not establish that public funds were missing or diverted.
‘A Budget Is Not a Bank Account’
At the heart of Jombali’s response is a distinction he says was overlooked in Abdullahi’s analysis: an approved budget represents projected revenue and planned expenditure, not cash already sitting in a government account.
According to him, state budgets across Nigeria are ordinarily built around anticipated receipts from sources including federal allocations, internally generated revenue, grants, loans and development financing.
Jombali argued that a shortfall between projected and actual revenue should therefore not automatically be interpreted as evidence of financial mismanagement.
“A budget is not a bank account,” he said, stressing that the more important question is how a government responds when projected resources fail to materialise.
The Bureau Journal has previously followed debates around Governor Nasir Idris’ administration and its wider governance agenda in Kebbi, including questions around public trust and development.
The ₦228 Billion Question
Jombali’s strongest challenge concerns the Capital Development Fund.
He said Abdullahi treated the failure to realise about ₦228 billion projected under the fund as evidence of poor financial management while, in his view, failing to account for the fact that the expected revenue did not materialise in the first place.
His argument is that there can be no missing cash where the underlying revenue was never received.
Jombali compared the situation to expecting a farm harvest from a season in which the necessary rainfall never came.
“There is no missing money in the figures he cites. There is only unrealised revenue,” he argued.
The distinction is central to his defence of the administration because it shifts the question from whether the original budget projections were achieved to whether government adjusted its spending when those projections changed.
How Kebbi Responded to the Revenue Shortfall
According to Jombali, the figures referenced by Abdullahi actually demonstrate fiscal adjustment rather than financial recklessness.
He pointed to Kebbi’s reported receipt of more than ₦172 billion from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), alongside the state’s achievement of more than 70 per cent of its internally generated revenue target.
He also cited more than 90 per cent performance in transfers from recurrent resources.
Jombali argues that these figures show the state was able to maintain government operations despite the failure of some projected revenue sources.
More importantly, he said expenditure was adjusted downward as available resources changed.
In his interpretation, that decision is evidence that the administration chose to align spending with actual resources rather than borrow excessively or continue spending against projected funds that had not arrived.
‘What Happened to the Money?’
The phrase at the centre of Abdullahi’s criticism became the focus of Jombali’s rebuttal.
Jombali questioned how funds could have gone missing when, according to the figures under discussion, the projected revenue itself was not realised.
He argued that asking what happened to the money without first establishing that the money entered government coffers creates a misleading impression.
“One struggles to see how money that never entered government coffers could have ‘happened’ to anything,” he said.
For Jombali, the more relevant question is what happened to the revenue that was actually received and how the government deployed it.
Jombali Points to Capital Spending
The governor’s aide also challenged Abdullahi to move beyond questions and provide evidence if he believes funds were mismanaged.
He noted that the figures discussed in the original criticism included more than ₦103 billion allocated to agriculture, nearly ₦60 billion for works and transport, and more than ₦110 billion combined for education and health.
Jombali said that if the opposition believes the allocations were not properly used, it should identify specific projects or provide evidence of diversion, inflated contracts or programmes that existed only on paper.
“If there are roads that were not built, identify them,” he argued.
“If there are schools that were not renovated, name them. If there are hospitals that exist only on paper, present the evidence.”
His broader contention is that asking repeated questions without establishing the underlying allegation does not, by itself, amount to proof of wrongdoing.
Nearly ₦240 Billion Spent, Jombali Says
Jombali further pointed to reported expenditure of nearly ₦240 billion, including more than ₦152 billion in capital spending.
He presented those figures as evidence that the state continued to finance development priorities despite the revenue constraints affecting its original projections.
Rather than describing the lower spending level as evidence of failure, he said the adjustment demonstrated the administration’s willingness to adapt its expenditure to available resources.
That interpretation, however, remains part of the governor’s camp’s political defence of the administration and should be assessed alongside official budget and expenditure records.
Kebbi’s Wider Development Debate
The dispute comes against the backdrop of broader political debate over the performance of the Nasir Idris administration as the state moves towards the 2027 political cycle.
The Bureau Journal has reported several developments involving the governor and the APC in Kebbi, including APC stakeholders backing Nasir Idris for another term.
The administration has also continued to face political scrutiny from opposition groups and rival political camps.
Earlier reports have included disagreements within the opposition camp, such as the controversy involving aggrieved ADC members and the Malami-led political structure in Kebbi.
Those political tensions make economic and budget performance an increasingly important part of the contest over the governor’s record.
The Real Test Is What the Money Delivered
Jombali’s response ultimately makes a broader argument about how government performance should be measured.
His position is that the size of an approved budget cannot, on its own, determine whether a government has performed well or badly.
Instead, he argues that the assessment should consider actual revenue, expenditure, capital investment, fiscal adjustments and the results delivered to citizens.
That means the strongest test of Kebbi’s 2025 fiscal management is not simply whether the state achieved its original revenue projections.
It is whether the resources that actually became available were properly accounted for and converted into measurable public outcomes.
That is where the debate between the government and its critics is likely to become more consequential.
For Jombali, however, the figures cited in the criticism do not support the suggestion that billions of naira disappeared.
His conclusion is blunt: most of the money being questioned was never received in the first place.
The question that remains is therefore not merely what happened to the money? but whether Kebbi’s government can demonstrate, through independently verifiable records and completed projects, what it achieved with the money that did arrive.
That distinction could become increasingly important as the political debate over Governor Nasir Idris’ record intensifies ahead of 2027.
By Ibrahim Abubakar Jombali
Special Adviser on Public Enlightenment and Orientation to the Executive Governor of Kebbi State
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