An audit by Nigeria’s Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation (OAuGF) says auditors could not verify recipients of N33.75 billion in 2023 transfers across 35 states, raising questions about oversight of federal aid.
The report says the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) reported electronic transfers totaling N33,751,080,000 to 3,295,207 households or beneficiaries during 2023. It identifies the recipients as people listed in the National Social Register and enrolled in the National Beneficiary Register.
Auditors said payment vouchers lacked complete beneficiary details. A Remita statement that could have helped compare paid recipients with the two registers was not presented for audit, according to the OAuGF report. The report said auditors could not authenticate the payments or determine whether recipients were genuine. It warned that weak internal controls posed a risk of transfers to ineligible or fictitious recipients, but did not find that such transfers occurred.
The OAuGF gives one total for 2023 and does not divide it between administrations. Premium Times reported that the audit included eight queries against the NCTO totaling N76.24 billion; that queried sum is not a finding that the money was lost.
The wider safety-net project aims to reach poor and vulnerable Nigerians identified through social registers, according to the World Bank.
The NCTO disputed the auditors’ account. TheCable and Punch reported that the office said it emailed the 2023 beneficiary list to auditors on April 18, 2025, and that its project accountant retained email evidence that a Remita payment report was shared. The office also argued that an audit query alone did not determine whether funds had been misused. Its claims about sending the records are unverified.
The report recommends that the national programme manager account for the funds and provide proof of receipt to the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committees. If the money cannot be accounted for, it recommends recovering the amount and returning it to the Treasury.
