Professor Elias Nankap Lamle of the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies, University of Jos, has challenged claims surrounding the ₦10.11 billion reportedly recorded as travel and transport expenditure by the Plateau State Government in the first six months of 2026.
Lamle, in a detailed response to an article by Shabul Mazadu titled “N10.11bn TP/TRAVEL ACCOUNTABILITY & MATTERS ARISING,” said the controversy surrounding the figure was largely driven by what he described as a misunderstanding of government accounting, expenditure classification and public-sector financial reporting.
The university don said he had followed with interest the political developments in Plateau State and the various interpretations being given to the policies, actions and expenditures of the administration of Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang.
He explained that although he had deliberately avoided commenting on every political argument, Mazadu’s article compelled him to respond because of the need, in his view, to ensure that the public understands the facts surrounding the expenditure correctly.
Lamle stressed that citizens have every right to question public expenditure, describing accountability as a fundamental requirement of democratic governance.
According to him, citizens are entitled to know how public resources are appropriated, administered and spent. However, he argued that accountability must be based on an accurate understanding of how government functions, how public expenditure is classified and how financial transactions are processed and reported.
He identified what he described as the fundamental problem with Mazadu’s analysis as the apparent confusion between a budgetary or expenditure classification and the personal expenditure of the Governor or Government House.
Lamle argued that the appearance of an expenditure under a category such as “Travel and Transport” does not automatically mean that the money was personally spent by the Governor, nor does it necessarily mean that the entire amount was spent exclusively by Government House or the Governor’s Office.
He explained that government accounting and public-sector financial reporting do not operate in such a simplistic manner.
“A government budget is not merely a collection of isolated envelopes of money belonging personally to individual office holders,” Lamle stated.
He said a government budget is an instrument through which the government plans, authorises, classifies, controls, executes and reports public expenditure.
Consequently, he maintained that when an expenditure category is reported, it is necessary to understand exactly what the classification captures, what transactions have been aggregated under it, which government entities incurred the expenditure, the purposes for which the expenditure was incurred and how the transactions were processed and accounted for.
Commissioner’s Explanation Deserves Consideration
Lamle said it was against this background that the explanation provided by Plateau State Commissioner for Information and Communication, Hon. Joyce Lohya Ramnap, deserved serious consideration.
He argued that the Commissioner did not claim that the House of Assembly, ministries or tertiary institutions had no budgets, nor did she suggest that the Judiciary was funded from the Governor’s personal allocation.
He added that the Commissioner did not claim that scholarships, medical assistance or pilgrim activities were constitutionally personal expenditures of the Governor.
Rather, Lamle said, what Ramnap explained was that the reported ₦10.11 billion represented aggregate expenditure relating to travel, transportation and associated official activities across the wider Plateau State public service.
According to him, such an explanation was neither strange nor financially absurd, but could be consistent with the way government expenditure may be aggregated and reported for budget implementation and fiscal analysis.
He explained that the fact that ministries, agencies, institutions, the legislature or other public bodies have individual budgets does not necessarily mean that expenditures incurred by those bodies cannot subsequently appear within a broader consolidated expenditure classification.
“This is the central point that appears to have escaped the writer,” he said.
Separate Budgets Can Still Form Part of Consolidated Reporting
Addressing the argument that the Punch report specifically referred to the Government House and Governor’s Office budget head and therefore could not include expenditures incurred by ministries, departments, agencies, tertiary institutions, the Judiciary or the House of Assembly, Lamle said the conclusion required a deeper understanding of public financial administration.
He stressed that there is a distinction between the organisational location of a budget and the economic or functional classification used in reporting actual expenditure.
According to him, failure to distinguish between these two dimensions of public financial management had contributed significantly to the confusion surrounding the ₦10.11 billion figure.
Lamle explained that in public financial administration, expenditure can be classified for several purposes, including appropriation, accounting, reporting, monitoring and control.
He noted that broad expenditure classifications could capture transactions associated with different government entities or related public functions.
Travel and transport expenditure, he explained, could arise from official government assignments, training and retraining, conferences, workshops, institutional programmes, legislative activities, judicial assignments, educational programmes, pilgrim activities, medical interventions, international engagements and other authorised government functions.
He therefore cautioned that the appearance of a large amount under “Travel and Transport” could not, without additional evidence, establish that the Governor personally travelled or personally consumed the entire amount.
‘Legitimate Questions Should Be Asked’
Lamle acknowledged that questions raised about where the expenditures were provided for in the 2026 Appropriation Bill were legitimate.
He noted that the House of Assembly, ministries, agencies, departments and tertiary institutions have their own budgets, but argued that this did not invalidate the Commissioner’s explanation.
“There is no contradiction between an institution having an approved budget and expenditure incurred by that institution subsequently being captured, aggregated or consolidated within a broader government expenditure classification,” he argued.
He maintained that separate institutional appropriations and consolidated financial reporting were not mutually exclusive.
According to him, government could appropriate funds through individual institutions and subsequently aggregate actual expenditure according to broader economic, functional or administrative classifications for financial reporting or analysis.
He stressed the need to distinguish appropriation from reporting classification.
“Appropriation concerns what expenditure the legislature has authorised government to undertake. Financial reporting concerns what expenditure has actually been incurred and how that expenditure is classified and reported. These are related but distinct processes,” he said.
Lamle therefore described the insistence that every expenditure must be traced exclusively to the original institutional budget head before being included in a reported travel and transport figure as an incomplete understanding of public-sector accounting and expenditure reporting.
He said it was legitimate and necessary for citizens to demand a detailed breakdown of the ₦10.11 billion, but maintained that it was another matter entirely to conclude, without establishing the underlying accounting methodology, that the Commissioner’s explanation was false simply because different government institutions had their own budget provisions.
‘₦10.11bn Should Not Automatically Become Governor’s Travel Bill’
Lamle also called for careful interpretation of the original report which identified Plateau State as having recorded ₦10.11 billion under travel and transport during the first six months of 2026.
He warned against converting such an expenditure figure into a political statement that “Governor Mutfwang spent ₦10.11 billion on travelling.”
According to him, the two statements represent different propositions.
“The first is an expenditure-reporting proposition. The second is a political assertion about personal or gubernatorial expenditure,” he said.
He maintained that the second proposition could not logically be derived from the first without additional evidence establishing who incurred the expenditure, what it consisted of and under what authority it was incurred.
Lamle said this was why the Commissioner’s clarification was important.
If the expenditure covered multiple Ministries, Departments and Agencies, tertiary institutions, the Judiciary, the House of Assembly, statutory personnel-related obligations, training, pilgrim activities, overseas scholarships, medical assistance and other official engagements, he argued, it would be misleading to present the entire amount as the Governor’s personal travel bill.
Don’t Personalise Every Government Expenditure Around Governor
The university don also criticised what he described as an increasing tendency in political discourse to personalise every government expenditure around the Governor.
He said the pattern was that whenever the state spent money, it was described as “the Governor spent”; whenever a ministry undertook a programme, it became “the Governor spent”; and whenever public servants travelled on official assignments, it became “the Governor travelled.”
He described such an approach as a dangerous simplification of the nature of government.
Lamle explained that while a Governor is the political head of a state government, the government itself is a complex institutional system comprising ministries, departments, agencies, commissions, public institutions, the legislature, the judiciary and numerous statutory bodies.
“The Governor does not personally undertake every transaction carried out by that governmental system,” he said.
He therefore argued that attributing every government expenditure to the Governor was not only politically convenient but could also be analytically misleading.
Scholarship Expenditure
Lamle used the issue of scholarships to illustrate his argument.
He noted that Mazadu had argued that scholarships to India did not fall under the budget heads of Government House or the Governor’s Office, but rather under the relevant education budget.
Lamle said that could be correct in terms of policy responsibility for scholarships, but maintained that it did not establish that travel, transportation and related logistics arising from such programmes could not appear under a consolidated travel and transport classification.
He explained that the policy ownership of a programme and the economic classification of expenditure incurred in implementing that programme were not necessarily the same.
“If government sends students, lecturers, civil servants, medical personnel or other public officials abroad or within Nigeria for approved programmes, the individuals may belong to different institutions and ministries,” he said.
“Yet the expenditure associated with their movement and official logistics can still be captured under an appropriate travel and transport classification in consolidated financial reporting.”
He said the same principle could apply to training and retraining.
A civil servant may work in one ministry, a lecturer may belong to a university, a judicial officer may belong to the Judiciary and a legislator may belong to the House of Assembly.
However, where government expenditure is being analysed according to the nature of the expenditure rather than only the institution that incurred it, travel and transport costs could be aggregated for reporting purposes.
‘₦10.11bn Is Substantial Public Money’
Lamle stressed that his argument should not be interpreted as suggesting that ₦10.11 billion was a small amount.
He described the figure as a very substantial amount of public money and said Plateau citizens were fully entitled to demand explanations about how it was spent.
He listed several questions that should be answered, including why the amount was spent, what the approved budget was, what the actual expenditure was, which institutions incurred the expenditure, what the individual components were, whether the expenditures were properly authorised, whether value for money was achieved and whether any of the expenditures were excessive, unnecessary or avoidable.
“These are serious accountability questions and they should be asked,” he said.
However, he maintained that such questions must be asked within the correct financial framework.
According to him, it would be wrong to first assume that the entire ₦10.11 billion represented the Governor’s personal travel expenditure and then build an argument around that assumption.
“The proper approach is to establish what the expenditure represents and then determine whether it was properly authorised, properly classified and properly spent,” he stated.
Calls for Examination of Financial Records
Lamle said the appropriate way to resolve the controversy was through examination of relevant financial records.
He listed the appropriation law, budget implementation reports, expenditure classifications, warrants and releases where available, financial statements of relevant MDAs, actual expenditure against approved provisions, institutional beneficiaries of the expenditure and, where appropriate, supporting financial records and reports of the Auditor-General.
He said only after such evidence had been examined could a responsible conclusion be reached on whether money had been improperly charged, misclassified, diverted or personally expended by a public official.
Lamle said he had no quarrel with Mazadu for asking questions and encouraged greater scrutiny of public finance.
His objection, he explained, was to what he considered the analytical premise from which the inquiry proceeded.
He argued that Mazadu appeared to have started from the assumption that the ₦10.11 billion was essentially expenditure of the Governor and Government House and subsequently treated the Commissioner’s clarification as an attempt to mislead the public.
“That is, in my view, unfair and, more importantly, analytically unsound,” he said.
‘Government’s Explanation Should Be Tested With Evidence’
Lamle maintained that if the Commissioner’s explanation was factually incorrect, those challenging it should demonstrate precisely, using official financial records, where the explanation was wrong.
He argued that it was insufficient to simply claim that the explanation could not be true because different government institutions had separate budgets.
According to him, the Commissioner’s explanation that the expenditure figure covered multiple arms and institutions of government should therefore not automatically be regarded as an evasion.
Rather, he described it as a clarification that could be subjected to further verification through official records.
‘Criticism Must Be Based on Facts’
The university don said there was nothing wrong with criticising Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s administration, questioning its policies, examining its expenditures or demanding greater transparency.
However, he maintained that criticism became intellectually weak when it was based on an inaccurate understanding of government financial administration.
“As scholars, journalists and public commentators, we owe the people more than sensational figures. We owe them context, accuracy and intellectual honesty,” he said.
Lamle acknowledged that the ₦10.11 billion figure might deserve further scrutiny and said the government should, where appropriate, provide a detailed breakdown.
He also called for the Auditor-General to examine the relevant expenditures, while urging civil society organisations to interrogate the figures and citizens to demand value for money.
“But we should not transform a broad expenditure classification into a personal bill for the Governor without establishing that fact,” he cautioned.
‘Let the Facts Determine the Conclusion’
Lamle further clarified that his intervention was not intended to serve as political defence of Governor Mutfwang.
He said he had been closely following political developments in Plateau State and had his own observations about the administration, its policies, achievements and shortcomings.
“I am not writing this rejoinder as a political spokesman for Governor Mutfwang, nor am I suggesting that every expenditure of his administration should be defended,” he stated.
Rather, he said, his concern was that facts should remain facts even when they did not fit preferred political narratives.
He argued that when government provided a technically plausible explanation of a financial figure, the responsible response was to interrogate the explanation with evidence rather than dismiss it simply because it did not support a predetermined political conclusion.
Lamle said he believed the Commissioner for Information deserved credit for attempting to clarify what the ₦10.11 billion represented.
He acknowledged that her explanation could still be followed by legitimate demands for a detailed breakdown, but maintained that dismissing it as a “farce” without first demonstrating that the government’s accounting interpretation was wrong did not constitute a sufficiently rigorous argument.
Professor Lamle Proposes Different Question
According to Lamle, the controversy should therefore not be framed as: “How did Governor Mutfwang spend ₦10.11 billion on travelling?”
He argued that such a formulation already contained an unproven conclusion.
Instead, he proposed that the central question should be:
“What constituted the ₦10.11 billion reported under travel and transport expenditure in Plateau State during the first six months of 2026, which government entities incurred the expenditure, under what approved provisions, how was the expenditure classified and reported, and what value did the expenditure deliver?”
Lamle said if detailed records revealed waste, abuse, misclassification or financial impropriety, the government should be held accountable.
On the other hand, he said if the records demonstrated that the expenditure represented legitimate aggregate expenditure across the state’s public institutions, the public should equally be informed.
“Accountability is not the art of proving government guilty. Accountability is the disciplined process of establishing the truth,” he stated.
‘Get the Facts Right’
Lamle concluded by respectfully but firmly disagreeing with Mazadu’s analysis.
He acknowledged that the inquiry into public expenditure was legitimate and that concern for accountability was commendable, but maintained that the interpretation of how government expenditure was classified and administered was fundamentally flawed.
According to him, the article moved from an expenditure figure to a political conclusion without adequately establishing the accounting basis for that conclusion.
“As a scholar, I believe it is important to say so,” he said.
Lamle called on citizens, journalists, scholars and public commentators to continue criticising government where criticism was deserved, demanding accountability where necessary and insisting on transparency.
However, he urged them to also give credit where it was due and, above all, to ensure that facts were established before public financial information was turned into political ammunition.
Professor Elias Nankap Lamle
Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies
University of Jos
