Three Years On, Oyo State Still Hides How Contracts Are Awarded

For more than three years, the Oyo State Government has refused to release its procurement contract information to the public domain, an attempt in flagrant contravention of its own law, which initially frowned upon such actions. Read Also: Why Oyo State still hides how contracts are awarded

For example, Section 11(c) of the Oyo State Public Procurement Law of 2010 directs the Bureau of Public Procurement, or the Due Process Office, as it is commonly known, to publicise contract awards as it deems appropriate.

Read Also: Blood, Shame, and Despair: The Harsh Reality of Menstruating Girls in Oyo Schools with No Toilets

That is, making procurement information digital and available to the entire public. It was this regulatory requirement that led to the creation of the state’s open contracting portal.

But Oyo has fallen short. PIJAlance checked the official website using digital tools that retrieve older versions of websites. Our team found that the last time the state published its procurement details was in 2022.

Further checks on the Data Open Contracting Portal, a similar website, display “This dataset is no longer updated” for Oyo State Procurement details as of July 2022, confirming PIJAlance’s analysis. Worthy of note, while nothing has been uploaded since July 2022, Oyo State’s Open Contracting Portal is currently inaccessible.

Attempts to contact the Bureau of Public Procurement in Oyo State for comments were unsuccessful as of the time of filing this report. Meanwhile, in 2023, a similar attempt made in collaboration with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), regarding the Bureau’s flagrant disregard of its procurement law in the award of Ibadan Circular Road, was not honoured. Despite reminders well beyond the statutory seven-day window. Silence replaced accountability.

The deafening quietness is even louder when directly compared to the debt and budget of the last six years. In 2019, Oyo’s budget was between ₦200 billion, with domestic debt already exceeding ₦80 billion, multiple government sources noted.

Read Also: Oyo Received N736m Ecological Fund, Yet Floods Isolate Communities in State’s Speaker Constituency

In 2020, the budget increased to ₦213 billion, and loans are still strangling the state’s finances, according to the Debt Management Office (DMO) data. In 2021, the budget increased to approximately ₦268 billion, but no matching transparency was offered to show how such funds were spent. The open contracting portal remains un-uploaded, inoperable and inaccessible.

In 2022, the budget was at ₦294 billion, whereas debts continued in a trajectory of an increasing trend. In 2023, the budget increased once more to approximately ₦310 billion, but PIJAlance confirmed that this was the year that Oyo last released its procurement records since the ones it released in 2022.

Read Also: Despite Over ₦60bn Financial Commitments, Darkness Plagues Oyo State’s Light-Up Project

In 2024, the state surpassed the ₦434 billion mark, and in 2025, Governor Seyi Makinde signed into law a record budget of ₦684 billion, more than three times what was available in 2019.

As of March 2025, the DMO placed Oyo’s domestic debt at ₦86.8 billion, external liabilities at US$63.8 million in 2023, equivalent to tens of billions of naira at the rate approved by the CBN.

The vision is unblurred. Oyo’s budgets have grown over 200 per cent since 2019, when Governor Makinde began governing the affairs of the state, but its borrowing has been cumbersome.

Read Also: In Oyo, Infrastructure Deficit Contributes to Absenteeism Among Secondary School Girls

Even as such years of rising spending and lending have come and gone, the state government has defaulted in the basic duty of explaining to its people how the money was managed through the open contracting portal.

According to the Patriot Institute of Journalism and Arts (PIJA) Foundation, the provisions of the Oyo State Procurement law are unambiguous about what is expected from the state. The contract data must be digitised and made public. By defaulting, the government is losing its own integrity and eroding public trust in democracy.

This is not a technical issue. The law is evident, there is the capability, and there are timelines. Withholding publication is not happenstance.

With increasing debts and budgets that have tripled, openness cannot be delayed. Oyo people cannot be beggars for what the law is supposed to give them.

The Open Contracting Portal needs to be reopened with the latest data uploaded for the public to know how their funds are spent and managed since 2019 to date.

Read Also: ₦420m Unused Specialist Hospital Precured by Presidency’s SDG, Vandalised Two Years After Completion in Oyo