A prosecution witness at the FCT High Court in Maitama, Abuja, on Thursday told the court how $760,910.84 was used to pay advance school fees for four children of former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello at the American International School Abuja (AISA), one of the most expensive schools in the country.

Nicholas Okehone, an internal auditor at the school, confirmed the payments were made through a string of companies including Forza Oil and Gas, Alyeshua Solutions Services, and Unnati General Trading LLC based in the UAE. A separate $100,000 came from Uganda. The arrangement was a pre-payment deal covering tuition until the children’s graduation.

Bello is standing trial on 16 counts of money laundering and criminal breach of trust involving an alleged N110.4 billion. He has pleaded not guilty.

The revelations sit uncomfortably against what was happening in Kogi State during his eight years in office. In September 2019, over 7,000 public school teachers in primary and junior secondary schools petitioned the governor, begging him to clear salary arrears that had stretched, for some, to 39 months. The communique, issued by the Basic Education Staff Association of Nigeria (BESAN) after an emergency meeting in Lokoja, said the affected teachers had “turned beggars in order to feed themselves and family members.”

It was not just BESAN saying so. The Kogi NLC chairman, Onuh Edoka, confirmed at a government house meeting in May 2019 that workers across multiple categories were owed between eight and 39 months of salary, directly contradicting the governor’s public claim that he was not owing workers “a dime.”

The crisis persisted. By March 2022, when the government finally issued salaries, it paid only 17 percent of what workers were owed. Workers at local government councils were receiving between 35 and 50 percent of their entitled pay, and even that came irregularly. The Kogi NLC formally resolved in January 2022 that the Bello administration had not implemented any cash-backed promotion for workers since taking office in 2016, and that Kogi workers had effectively been on the same salary scale since 2011.

Beyond unpaid workers, the NLC documented that Kogi residents were grappling with some of the worst public service delivery in the North Central zone, with health workers, teachers, and local government staff all repeatedly reporting months of salary gaps that left basic services stretched thin across the state.

While that was the reality on the ground in Kogi, a different kind of transaction was taking place elsewhere. Court proceedings later revealed that the governor’s own children benefited from lavish arrangements, with tuition payments wired years in advance from multiple companies abroad.

Thursday’s court proceedings detailed how those payments were structured. The court received evidence of $49,600 wired from Forza Oil and Gas for Zahra Bello, $44,700 for Fatima Bello, $78,160 from Alyeshua Solutions Services for Fatima Bello, and four separate payments of $75,000 from Unnati General Trading LLC through First Abu Dhabi Bank in the UAE for four of the children. A signed agreement titled “Pre-Paid School Fees Until Graduation” covered all four children and was executed on behalf of the Bello family.”

Of the $845,852.84 paid in total into AISA’s account, the school deducted fees for educational services already rendered to the children and refunded the remaining $760,910.84 to the EFCC, which confirmed receipt into its recovery account. (TheCable, April 27, 2024; Punch, April 27, 2024.) The fact that services had already been partially consumed before the EFCC intervened means a portion of the funds, whatever their origin, had already been spent on the children’s education before investigators caught up with the transaction.

Bello’s defence team objected to the documents being admitted, but Justice Maryanne Anineh overruled them. School receipts, bank statements, admission letters and the pre-payment agreement are now part of the court record. His lawyers will have their opportunity to challenge the evidence when the trial resumes in May and June 2026.

But the documented record from his tenure already tells two simultaneous stories. In one, teachers begged for salaries they had not seen in years and received 17 percent when they finally did. In the other, over $760,000 moved through UAE banks and Ugandan companies to pre-pay elite schooling for the governor’s children. Both stories have sources. Both are on record.