Thesearchlight.com

By The Searchlight Investigative Desk / May 25, 2026

It is a singular, unforgivable crime when a public officer steals from the treasury. It is an act of organized treason against the republic when thirty-one state governors, men sworn on the Bible and the Constitution to protect the welfare of their people, collude, in broad daylight, to siphon constitutionally mandated funds from their Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocations to purchase the re-election of a single president.

The document obtained by The Searchlight, titled The Roll Call of Shame and published by Worldview International, does not allege a conspiracy. It documents one. A conspiracy that was not hatched in shadows but executed through the formal machinery of state governments, authorized at the federal ministerial level, and warehoused by the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Mr. Hope Uzodimma.

According to the report, the mechanism was brutally straightforward. At the end of April 2026, the 31 APC governors had reportedly pooled approximately ₦800 billion, out of a projected ₦1 trillion war chest, to return President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to office in 2027. The mathematics is damning: an average of ₦26 billion per state. This was not voluntary party fundraising. It was a system of monthly deductions at source, channelled through the Renewed Hope Ambassador (RHA) platform, with the blessing of the then-Finance Minister, Wale Edun.

Let us be explicit about what FAAC money is. It is not a political slush fund. It is the monthly lifeline that pays teacher salaries, stocks hospital pharmacies, repairs decaying roads, and funds local government administration. In 2024, as the report notes, the Federation Account distributed ₦28.78 trillion, a 79 percent increase driven by the removal of fuel subsidies. Nigerians were promised transformation. Instead, they got a coordinated heist.

The scandal unravelled not through patriotic whistleblowing, but through the greed of the conspirators themselves. Trouble began, the report states, when some governors demanded accountability from Uzodimma. He allegedly became evasive, claiming the money was “already spent”, but could not say on what. The NLNG-linked funds were also allegedly moved into the PGF structure. The resulting outrage factionalized the forum. A “coup” meeting was held at Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun’s Abuja lodge, where Enugu State Governor Peter Mbah was tipped as Uzodimma’s replacement.

President Tinubu, allegedly on an official foreign trip to France, Kenya and Rwanda, was forced to intervene personally. He brokered a fragile truce that reportedly required Uzodimma to refund significant portions of the disputed funds. The President did not order an investigation. He did not demand the return of the ₦800 billion to the people. He protected the bag man. That is not the behaviour of a man who did not know. That is the behaviour of a beneficiary.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has since attracted forensic scrutiny to the transactions. The Director-General of the Nigerian Energy Commission has been arrested in connection with an overlapping ₦701 billion probe. Yet, as of the report’s press time, neither the Presidency, nor Uzodimma, nor the APC national secretariat issued a formal denial. The APC South-East chapter called the ₦26 billion per governor figure “laughable” and “unrealistic.” But when your only defence is that the number seems too large, and you cannot deny that a fund existed, that governors met, that a Finance Minister authorized deductions, and that the President flew home from France to manage the fallout, you have no defence at all.

The thirty-one names are now public. From Katsina’s Dikko Umaru Radda to Lagos’s Babajide Sanwo-Olu, from Borno’s Babagana Zulum to Rivers’ Siminalayi Fubara. Every one of them received FAAC allocations. Every one of them was part of a forum that agreed to the deductions. Every one of the nurses, teachers, market traders, and unemployed graduates they govern has been robbed.

This is not a political scandal. It is a criminal conspiracy. And it has a name: the Tinubu re-election fund.