The N33.75 billion cash transfer infraction flagged last week by the Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF), Mr Shaakaa Kanyitor Chira, if eventually established, exemplifies the level of opacity in our kind of ossified civil and public services, long plagued by sleaze, graft and venality.
A near-neolithic system in which administrative staff of an agency could obstruct auditors’ access to REMITA records and high profile transactions could bypass mandatory pre-audits is a clearly institutionalized impunity that masks corruption from public scrutiny.
However, any malfeasance concerning the N33.75 billion cash transaction must not be allowed to escape scrutiny. A thorough probe of the minutest details of the transaction is thus ineluctable.
We must see the dregs of the pot of this saga, if only to protect the hapless poor, vulnerable Nigerians, who have found themselves repeatedly losing from both ends: They are walloped thoroughly by poverty and misery arising from harsh economic policies and denied the token being doled out by the government to palliate their pains.
The rumble emerged last week after the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) said the disbursement of N33.75 billion to more than 3.29 million households in 2023 could not be verified against genuine beneficiaries.
The blistering audit queries were contained in the 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance and Internal Control Weaknesses in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (NICWM), which examined the transactions of the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO), Abuja, for the 2023 financial year.
The report, transmitted to the National Assembly on July 17, 2026, said electronic transfers totalling N33.75 billion were made to 3,295,207 households and beneficiaries listed on the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states.
However, according to auditors, the NCTO allegedly failed to provide sufficient records to establish the identities of recipients or reconcile the payments with the official beneficiary registers. They said payment vouchers did not contain complete beneficiary details, while records required to verify the transfers were not made available.
The NCTO was specifically faulted for allegedly failing to produce a REMITA statement showing beneficiaries who actually received the funds against those listed on the National Social Register and National Beneficiary Register.
“This hindered the authentication of the payments and made it difficult to ascertain whether the beneficiaries who received the funds were genuine,” the auditors said.
The report also alleged that officials of the cash transfer office obstructed efforts to obtain the REMITA records required for the audit, adding: “All efforts to obtain access to the REMITA statement were obstructed and denied by NCTO accounts staff, thereby frustrating the audit process.”
The NCTO, in a very comprehensive response to the audit queries, however, rejected the AuGF’s allegation that it could not provide sufficient evidence that N33.75bn in electronic cash transfers reached genuine beneficiaries.
In a statement issued last Wednesday, the NCTO management described the interpretation of the audit observations as materially incomplete, insisting that the questioned funds were transferred through the established payment architecture to beneficiaries captured in the National Beneficiary Register.
It also refuted the allegation that its officials obstructed auditors from accessing the REMITA payment records, saying documentary evidence, including emails showing the transmission of beneficiary data and payment information, was available for independent verification.
The Office said the audit observation should not be interpreted as a finding that N33.75billion was stolen, diverted or lost, stressing that an audit observation requiring clarification or supporting documents is different from a final determination of fraud or financial loss.
“An audit query or observation is not, by itself, a final determination that public funds were stolen, diverted, misappropriated or lost,” NCTO cautioned, adding that audit observations ordinarily require management responses, examination of supporting records and reconciliation before definitive conclusions can be reached.
The NCTO, in its response to the central allegation, said the transfers were made electronically to identified beneficiaries under the programme’s established payment architecture.
It explained that beneficiaries were not paid simply on the basis of names submitted for payment but through beneficiary records maintained in the programme’s information systems and subjected to identification, validation and authorisation controls.
It maintained that the electronic nature of the programme meant that millions of beneficiaries’ records were maintained digitally and did not have to be physically printed and attached to individual payment vouchers where the underlying electronic audit trail was available.
According to the NCTO management, the 2023 NBR beneficiary list was sent to the auditors by email on April 18, 2025, at 11:48 am, while the 2024 and 2025 NBR records were transmitted on April 21, 2026, at 6:25 pm.
“Beneficiary records underlying the transfers are maintained electronically and can be subjected to data-level reconciliation against the corresponding electronic payment records,” the office said.
Given the circumstances and as noted earlier, a probe of the N33.75 billion saga is ineluctable. Let the anti-graft agencies take up the gauntlet and immediately commence a thorough investigation of the transaction to determine the veracity of the claims and counterclaims between the auditors and the NCTO.
If the NCTO is ultimately found culpable over the N33.75 cash transaction, it will be an unfortunate recrudescence of the established tradition for which the social intervention programmes of both the Buhari and Tinubu administrations have become notorious.
The arrangement put in place as a bulwark or safety net for the vulnerable populations against the pangs of harsh economic policies have tended to become easy prey for corrupt public officials to heist or attempt to heist. This renders the intendment of the cash transfer scheme utterly nugatory.
We recall a N585.2 million transfer request scandal involving the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, youthful Dr Beta Edu, about eight months into the Tinubu administration.
The kernel of the matter was the content of a leaked memo, dated December 20, 2023, which Betta wrote to the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF), directing the transfer of the said amount (N585.2million) to a UBA private account of one Oniyelu Bridget, said to be the Project Accountant of Grants for Vulnerable Groups.
The cash was meant for vulnerable groups in four states — Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Lagos and Ogun. An unfazed Beta Edu dismissed the allegation and made spirited efforts to defend the action.
But it was all cockamamie because her request was against extant rules. Chapter 7, Section 713 of Nigeria’s Public Sector Financial Regulations Act 2009, unambiguously forbids transfers of government funds into private accounts. Mercifully, the vigilant Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) then, Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, refused to process the ex- minister’s request because it was a wrong procedure.
But it was unfortunate that Beta Edu, who was suspended before she was eventually replaced, allowed herself to have been felled by the same proverbial “banana peels” that became the undoing of her predecessor, Sadiya Umar-Farouq. She (Sadiya) was investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over N37.1billion alleged to have been laundered under her watch.
Betta it was who, by her own admission, snitched on Sadiya and Ms Halima Shehu, National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), over the N37.1 billion alleged fraud and N44.8 billion alleged scam for which they were respectively investigated by the EFCC.
The NSIPA itself was established as a statutory agency under the National Social Investment Programme Agency Act 2022, with responsibility for implementing major social intervention programmes, including N-Power, the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, the National Cash Transfer Programme and the National Social Safety Net Programme.
In January 2024, President Bola Tinubu suspended all the programmes being run by the NSIPA, domiciled under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The President directed the then Minister of Finance and Coordinator of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, to fine tune those programmes for greater efficiency and accountability. The success or otherwise of that initiative is to be seen.
It is, however, oddly that close to three years after, EFCC’s probe into the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation under Beta Edu, as well as the cases against Sadiya and Halima are yet to see the light of the day.
The EFCC indicated in late 2024 that it had submitted an interim/preliminary progress report to President Tinubu, but the contents or formal outcomes of that submission were never made public.
Early in the probe, precisely around April 2024, the anti-graft agency reported tracking transactions across more than 50 bank accounts and recovering approximately ₦30 billion ($24 million) in connection with broader investigations into the humanitarian ministry.
Civil society coalitions and transparency groups have repeatedly criticized the extended delay, most times stretching past two years, for the EFCC to officially conclude, file charges in court, or clear the names of those under probe.
The same Beta Edu was recently named a member of the Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council. What an incautious and tawdry lip service to public probity! This is highly condemnable. With this kind of slap-in-the ribs approach to corruption fight, how will public officials be sufficiently deterred against dipping their itchy fingers into the public till
Little wonder that corruption no longer slithers in fright under the table in our civil and public services. It now struts in the open in utter bravado!
We strongly demand that the outcome of investigation into the N33.75billion cash transfer be made public. Everyone found wanting should be openly prosecuted and every fathing discovered to have been diverted or misappropriated recovered. And if no malfeasance is established, those involved should be publicly exonerated accordingly.
The audit queries over the N33.75 billion saga are coming in the wake of the report that the Federal Government plans to invest a whopping $1 billion in its social protection programmes. The plan is said to be aimed at shifting vulnerable Nigerians from temporary relief to lasting economic empowerment and self-reliance.
The programme, the Household Prosperity and Empowerment Social Protection Project, known as HOPE-SP, was unveiled in July by President Tinubu at the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja. The package, supported by the World Bank, is said to be aimed at deepening poverty reduction, strengthening human capital and expanding economic opportunities across the country.
We are admonishing that the $1billion scheme be suspended till the N33.75billion transaction is thoroughly probed and all the accountability questions relating to the cash are satisfactorily resolved.
The government should establish safeguards for its social intervention programmes to stop corrupt civil and public officials from further feasting on the funds meant for the hapless poor. Such safeguards should include transparent procurement, beneficiary verification, independent monitoring and periodic public reporting.
We buy into the recommendation by fiery human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), that the government should ensure that funds meant for poverty reduction reach their intended beneficiaries by establishing a body comprising credible civil society organisations to oversee the disbursement of such development funds.
It is high time the authorities stopped, through adequate bulwarks, the turpitude of stealing palliatives meant to help the poor especially at a period of economic tailspin. It is invidious and unconscionable.