MDAs Spent N50.41bn on Foreign Trips, Estacode in Three Years
By Aboki Forex —
Federal ministries, departments and agencies released at least N50.41bn for foreign trips, air tickets, estacode, offshore allowances and overseas training between June 2023 and June 19, 2026. The spending was recorded in 1,967 transactions involving 129 federal institutions and their agencies, according to government payment records obtained from GovSpend and analysed by The PUNCH.
GovSpend is a public expenditure tracking platform built by BudgIT. The analysis drew on 9,305 entries from six GovSpend transaction datasets. After removing 1,001 duplicates, 8,304 unique payments remained. Another 6,337 transactions were dropped because their descriptions did not clearly show a link to foreign travel. Only payments of N5m and above were counted, so N50.41bn is a minimum figure.
Where the money went
Foreign air tickets took the biggest share, N23.70bn or 47 per cent of the total, across 958 transactions. Estacode and offshore allowances followed with N17.05bn, representing 33.8 per cent. Other expenses such as visas, accommodation, participation fees, foreign exchange, protocol and travel logistics totalled N5.35bn or 10.6 per cent. Training outside Nigeria accounted for N4.32bn, or 8.6 per cent.
Three full 12-month periods from June 2023 to May 2026 accounted for N50.34bn, while N69.88m was released between June 1 and June 19, 2026.
Rise, then a fall
The bill rose from N16.54bn in June 2023 to May 2024 to N19.13bn between June 2024 and May 2025, an increase of N2.59bn or 15.7 per cent. It then fell by N4.47bn or 23.4 per cent to N14.66bn between June 2025 and May 2026.
The records showed 714 transactions in the first year at an average of N23.17m per payment. That rose to 780 transactions in the second year with an average value of N24.53m. Transactions fell to 467 in the third year, but the average value climbed to N31.39m, meaning fewer but larger payments drove the spending.
Technical Aid Corps tops the list
The Technical Aid Corps recorded the highest expenditure among the MDAs with N11.70bn across 93 transactions, or 23.2 per cent of the total. A substantial part covered offshore allowances for Nigerian volunteers and other foreign service activities. Its major releases included N1.45bn in July 2025, N1.27bn in April 2026, N1.23bn in May 2025, N1.22bn in December 2025 and N1.01bn in October 2025. Payments of N884.28m and N812.24m were recorded in May and April 2026.
The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation came second with N5.16bn in two transactions. Its largest payment, and the single biggest in the dataset, was N5.15bn released in December 2024 for outstanding estacode allowances and flight tickets for the Vice-President and First Lady's official foreign trips not budgeted for in 2023 and 2024. The payment was processed by the Accountant-General's office although the expenditure related to State House trips.
State House Headquarters followed with N4.83bn across 28 transactions, the Federal Ministry of Sports Development recorded N4.10bn in 25 payments, State House Operations for the President spent N2.12bn through 19 transactions and State House Operations for the Vice-President recorded N691.66m in nine payments.
State House Headquarters payments included N1.04bn for foreign exchange tied to President Bola Tinubu's trip to Ethiopia in February 2024, N750m for a presidential trip to Dubai in November 2023 and N426.88m for the Vice-President's trip to Switzerland in January 2024. The Sports Development bill was largely linked to Nigeria's participation in the 2024 African Games in Accra, Ghana, covering chartered flights, participation fees, allowances and estacode.
Other big spenders
The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure recorded N2.05bn through 221 transactions, the highest number of payments by any institution. The Federal Ministry of Finance followed with N1.58bn across 117 transactions, while the Federal Ministry of Education recorded N1.05bn through 20 payments. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs accounted for N1.05bn across 68 transactions and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit N1.01bn through 93 payments.
Other major spenders were the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, with N963.78m; the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, N773.68m; the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, N760.56m; and Police Formations and Commands, N731.82m.
The Ministry of Education paid N291.03m in December 2024 for one-way air tickets for 109 Nigerian scholars travelling from Abuja to Moscow, Russia. It also released N249.60m for one-way air tickets for 78 beneficiaries of the 2023/2024 Morocco scholarship programme. In February 2025, the Nigeria Christian Pilgrim Commission paid N498.89m for air tickets and ground handling for members of the House of Representatives and commission officials travelling to Rome and Israel for a research and programme development visit.
Most of these outlays, from air tickets to estacode and offshore allowances, are settled in foreign currency, making them a direct draw on Nigeria's dollar earnings.