Abuja, September 5, 2026 — The Federal Government cannot account for more than 3.29 million households listed as beneficiaries of a N33.75 billion cash-transfer programme, with auditors saying they were given no reliable evidence that the money paid out in 2023 actually reached the people it was meant for, according to a report from the Auditor-General for the Federation.
The finding is contained in the Auditor-General’s 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance/Internal Control Weaknesses in Ministries, Departments and Agencies, a document reviewed by Punch and Sahara Reporters. The report, compiled under Auditor-General Shaakaa Chira, examined transactions carried out by the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) in Abuja during the 2023 financial year and raised eight separate audit queries covering tens of billions of naira.
According to the report, electronic transfers totalling N33.751 billion were made to 3,295,207 households and individuals drawn from the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states. But when auditors asked the National Cash Transfer Office to account for who actually received that money, the agency came up short: the payment vouchers did not carry complete beneficiary details, and the Remita statement needed to cross-check who was paid against the official registers was never produced for review.
Without that reconciliation record, auditors said it was impossible to confirm whether the funds reached genuine, eligible beneficiaries at all — or whether the 3.29 million names on record even correspond to real people. The report further alleged that NCTO accounting staff actively blocked attempts to access the Remita records, frustrating the audit process and deepening the accountability gap. The Auditor-General flagged the risk of payments to ineligible or fictitious persons and possible loss of public funds, and recommended that the National Programme Manager account for the N33.75 billion before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committees, with any beneficiaries who cannot be verified treated as unaccounted for and any unverified sums recovered and remitted to the Treasury. NCTO management reportedly did not respond to the query.
The N33.75 billion transfer was not the only issue raised. The audit also queried:
- N36.744 billion paid through 215 vouchers for December 2023 transactions that were disbursed without the required prepayment or internal audit checks.
- N4.616 billion across 101 payments from the NCTO’s cash book that could not be supported with paid vouchers at all.
- N350.18 million disbursed to states for enrolling unbanked beneficiaries, which lacked beneficiary lists, photographs, attendance registers or acknowledgement records.
- N393.71 million returned by nine state cash-transfer units, with no documentation showing it was ever credited to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
- N280.42 million paid as a mobilisation advance to payment service providers without the required advance payment guarantee, and with no evidence of competitive bidding or technical evaluation.
- Store items worth N89.51 million that were never logged in the office’s stock ledger, which had not been updated since 2020.
- N17.42 million spent on diesel via staff cash advances rather than formal contracts, a method the report said cost the government roughly N2.18 million in forfeited tax revenue.
Across all eight queries, the report noted that NCTO management failed to respond to auditors.
The findings land amid a longer history of turbulence around Nigeria’s social intervention programmes. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission previously investigated an alleged N37.1 billion fraud under a former Humanitarian Affairs minister, Sadiya Umar-Farouq. Her successor, Betta Edu, was suspended after reports that N585 million had been transferred to a private account, while a former head of the National Social Investment Programme Agency, Halima Shehu, was arrested over the alleged diversion of N44 billion from agency accounts.
The scrutiny also comes as Nigeria continues drawing down a World Bank facility backing the programme: cumulative disbursements from the Bank’s $800 million National Social Safety Net Programme–Scale Up have reached roughly $744.6 million, or about 93 percent of the total facility, after an additional $208.29 million was drawn this year. In 2025, the World Bank itself found that only 37 percent of households targeted under the conditional cash-transfer scheme had actually benefited.
The audit report adds to questions raised in recent weeks over the reliability of the government’s own numbers. In July, the Presidency said an expanded cash-transfer effort had reached 15 million vulnerable households, repeating the claim in early August. But on August 26, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction Bernard Doro told Nigerians that just over 10 million households had been covered since President Bola Tinubu took office, with more than N600 billion disbursed. Doro had separately said in March that about 9.2 million people had benefited from a related Household Prosperity and Empowerment Cash Transfer Programme, with roughly N688 billion spent over two years.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the African Democratic Congress’s presidential candidate, seized on the discrepancy, asking in a statement issued through his aide Phrank Shaibu where five million households had “disappeared” to between the government’s two claims. He argued the arithmetic didn’t add up either: at the programme’s stated rate of N25,000 a month for three months, paying 10 million households in full should have cost about N750 billion, and 15 million households more than N1.1 trillion — well above the roughly N600 billion the government says it spent. Atiku called for an independent audit and for the government to publish verified beneficiary records, payment tranches, state-by-state breakdowns, and details of any failed transactions or reversals.
As part of efforts to tighten verification going forward, the government has said the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Identity Management Commission to require beneficiaries to link their Bank Verification Numbers and National Identification Numbers to the programme.
The Auditor-General’s report is now expected to go before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committees, which have the power to summon NCTO officials and demand the outstanding records. Whether the unverified N33.75 billion — or any of the other flagged sums — will be recovered, or whether officials will ultimately produce documentation proving beneficiaries were paid, remains to be seen. As of this report, NCTO management had not issued a public response to the audit findings.
