The Federal Government has been unable to satisfy auditors that N33.75bn transferred to more than 3.29 million households under its social intervention programme in 2023 actually reached genuine beneficiaries, according to the Auditor-General for the Federation.
The concern is contained in the Auditor-General’s 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance/Internal Control Weaknesses in Ministries, Departments and Agencies, which examined the accounts and transactions of the National Cash Transfer Office in Abuja.
The audit report said N33.751bn was electronically transferred to 3,295,207 households and beneficiaries listed on the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states during the year under review.
However, auditors said they could not authenticate the payments because the relevant vouchers lacked complete beneficiary information and the Remita records needed to reconcile those paid with names on the government’s beneficiary registers were not provided.
The report stated, “Electronic transfers amounting to N33,751,080,000.00 were made to 3,295,207 households/beneficiaries that have been mined to the NSR and enrolled on the NBR in 35 states for the year 2023.”
It added that “the paid vouchers for the payments above did not contain the full details of the beneficiaries.”
According to the auditors, the absence of the Remita statement meant they could not establish whether the people who received the funds were the same persons listed as beneficiaries.
“REMITA statement showing record of the beneficiaries paid as against those listed on the NSR and NBR was not presented for audit. This hindered the authentication of the payments and made it difficult to ascertain whether the beneficiaries who received the funds were genuine,” the report said.
The audit team further alleged that attempts to obtain the records were frustrated by officials of the National Cash Transfer Office.
“All efforts to obtain access to the REMITA statement were obstructed and denied by NTCO accounts staff, thereby frustrating the audit process,” it stated.
The Auditor-General warned that the control failures created risks of public funds being lost or payments being made to people who were either ineligible or fictitious.
The report consequently recommended that the National Programme Manager explain the N33.75bn to the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly and produce evidence showing that the listed beneficiaries received the money.
Where the funds cannot be satisfactorily accounted for, the auditors recommended their recovery and payment into the Treasury.
The management of the National Cash Transfer Office, according to the report, did not respond to the audit query.
The N33.75bn transaction was only one of several financial and control weaknesses identified during the audit.
The auditors also queried N36.744bn paid through 215 vouchers covering SS, IDA and output-based transactions in December 2023, saying the payments were made without the required internal audit or prepayment checks.
“None of the paid vouchers were pre-audited or checked by the Internal Audit as required by extant regulations,” the report stated.
Rather than conducting checks before the money was released, the Internal Audit Unit reviewed the vouchers after payment had already been made. The auditors said the arrangement exposed public funds to possible misapplication and diversion and recommended that the N36.74bn be properly accounted for before the National Assembly.
Another N4.616bn also came under scrutiny after the NTCO made 101 payments from its S&S/IDA Cash Book without presenting the corresponding paid vouchers for examination.
The Auditor-General again cited the risk of misapplication and diversion and recommended that the money be accounted for or recovered and returned to the Treasury.
The audit further uncovered an unexplained balance of N350.18m from funds released to state coordinators for the enrolment of unbanked beneficiaries.
The report said 32 payments totalling N3.09bn had been made to states for the exercise. Although documents covering N2.74bn of the expenditure in 34 states were presented to the auditors, N350.18m remained unsupported.
The auditors also found that the vouchers supplied were too vague to establish how the money was spent.
Documents expected to support the expenditure, including beneficiary lists, photographs, signed attendance registers, enrolment reports and acknowledgements from recipients, were reportedly missing.
The Auditor-General recommended recovery and remittance of the N350.18m to the Treasury if the amount could not be accounted for.
Another N393.71m was questioned after nine State Cash Transfer Units returned unused funds meant for beneficiary enrolment.
The NTCO explained that insecurity, disasters and other challenges prevented the affected states from conducting the enrolment exercises and that the money was consequently returned to the Treasury in 2023.
The explanation, however, was not backed by sufficient documentation.
“No documents were presented by NCTO to confirm that the amount refunded… was credited into the CRF,” the report said.
The auditors said the office also failed to provide Remita inflow statements and Internal Revenue Receipt pay slips to establish that the refund entered the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
There was also no evidence presented to show that the affected states eventually carried out the enrolment exercises.
The procurement of payment services attracted another query involving N280.42m.
The money was paid as a 30 per cent mobilisation advance to Payment Service Providers engaged to operate the platform through which cash transfers were to be made to beneficiaries.
According to the auditors, the payment was made without an Advance Payment Guarantee.
They also found no evidence that the required procurement process was followed in selecting the service providers, noting the absence of pre-qualification documents, bidding records and technical and financial evaluation reports.
The audit identified the possibility of payment for services not rendered and diversion of funds, recommending recovery of the N280.42m.
In addition, store items worth N89.51m purchased by the NTCO were not entered in the office’s store ledger.
The auditors said the relevant vouchers did not have Store Receipt Vouchers or Store Issue Vouchers attached, while the store ledger itself had not been updated since 2020.
The purchase of diesel generated another concern.
The NTCO spent N17.42m on diesel through cash advances to staff, despite the expenditure exceeding the N200,000 procurement threshold.
The auditors said the items reportedly purchased could not be sighted or traced to the stores and estimated that the procurement approach cost government about N2.18m in potential Value Added Tax and Withholding Tax revenue.
The audit report said management of the National Cash Transfer Office failed to respond to queries relating to all eight issues identified by the auditors.
The findings come amid continued government reliance on borrowing and other funding sources to sustain cash-transfer programmes targeting poor and vulnerable Nigerians.
Nigeria recently drew an additional $208.29m from the World Bank under the $800m National Social Safety Net Programme-Scale Up, pushing cumulative disbursements under the facility to about $744.61m, or roughly 93.1 per cent of the approved amount.
The International Development Association-funded facility was approved in December 2021 to strengthen Nigeria’s social protection system and expand cash transfers to vulnerable households.
The programme initially envisaged monthly payments of N5,000 to targeted households. Under the Tinubu administration, the intervention was subsequently redesigned to provide N25,000 monthly for three months, with an expanded target of 15 million households.
Implementation of the palliative component was delayed for almost 17 months despite the World Bank’s approval, with administrative challenges, political transition and controversies surrounding the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation contributing to the delays.
The ministry was later engulfed in a series of financial scandals.
In December 2023, the EFCC announced an investigation into an alleged N37.1bn fraud linked to the ministry during the tenure of former Minister Sadiya Umar-Farouq. She was subsequently invited and detained by the commission in January 2024.
Her successor, Betta Edu, also came under investigation after she reportedly authorised the transfer of N585m to a private account for the payment of vulnerable groups. The Accountant-General of the Federation rejected the transaction over alleged breaches of financial regulations.
President Bola Tinubu suspended Edu in January 2024 and ordered a comprehensive investigation into the ministry’s finances. The EFCC later announced the recovery of about N32.7bn and $445,000 connected to the alleged fraud.
Halima Shehu, then National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme Agency, was also arrested over allegations surrounding the movement of N44bn from NSIPA accounts to suspicious destinations.
President Tinubu subsequently appointed former Finance Minister Wale Edun to lead a special panel tasked with examining and restructuring the country’s social investment programmes.
As part of efforts to strengthen beneficiary verification, the Federal Government also introduced collaboration between the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Identity Management Commission, requiring beneficiaries to link their Bank Verification Numbers and National Identification Numbers to the programme.
The current Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Bernard Doro, said in March that about 9.2 million Nigerians had benefited from the Household Prosperity and Empowerment Cash Transfer Programme, with approximately N688bn disbursed over two years.
But concerns over the reach and transparency of the programme have persisted.
The World Bank reportedly stated in 2025 that only 37 per cent of the households targeted under the conditional cash-transfer programme had benefited from the scheme.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has also demanded clarification of what he described as conflicting figures on the number of households reached by the expanded cash-transfer programme.
Atiku urged the Federal Government to publish detailed payment records, including verified beneficiary households, payment tranches, state-by-state disbursements, failed transactions and reversals.
The latest Auditor-General’s findings could therefore intensify questions over whether billions of naira committed to Nigeria’s social protection programmes are reaching the vulnerable households for whom they were intended.
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