Federal Government’s cash-transfer programme has come under fresh scrutiny after the Auditor-General for the Federation raised concerns over the inability of auditors to verify that ₦33.751 billion transferred to more than 3.29 million households in 2023 reached genuine beneficiaries.
The finding is contained in the Auditor-General’s 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance and Internal Control Weaknesses in Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government.
The report, which was submitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly on July 17, 2026, examined transactions handled by the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO), Abuja, during the 2023 financial year. Its specific findings on the cash transfers became widely reported in early September after media organisations obtained copies of the report.
According to the report, electronic transfers totalling ₦33.751 billion were made to 3,295,207 households and beneficiaries selected from the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states.
However, auditors said they were unable to establish from the available records whether the payments actually reached the intended beneficiaries.
The audit reportedly found that payment vouchers did not contain sufficient beneficiary information to enable proper verification. It also raised concerns over the inability of auditors to obtain relevant Remita statements needed to reconcile the payments with beneficiary records.
The findings have renewed questions about transparency and accountability in the management of public funds allocated to poverty reduction, particularly amid conflicting figures released by government on the number of households reached by its cash-transfer interventions.
On August 26, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Bernard Doro, said the Federal Government had disbursed more than ₦600 billion in cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians over the previous three years and had reached slightly more than 10 million households.
The figure, however, differs from earlier government claims that the expanded cash-transfer programme had reached 15 million vulnerable households. The Presidency reportedly announced the 15-million figure in July and repeated it in August.
The apparent discrepancy has prompted demands for the government to clarify whether the figures refer to different stages or categories of beneficiaries, and to publish verifiable records of actual payments.
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has also questioned the difference between the 15 million households previously announced by the Presidency and the slightly more than 10 million households cited by the minister.
Meanwhile, human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to investigate the Auditor-General’s findings and recover the funds if investigations establish that they were diverted.
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung, has similarly raised questions over the audit findings, including whether the government can identify the households that actually received the funds.
At the centre of the controversy is the need for an independently verifiable audit trail showing the identity of beneficiaries, amounts paid, dates of transactions and payment channels used.
There are also questions about failed or reversed transactions and whether such transactions were properly reconciled with the government’s beneficiary databases.
The concerns are particularly significant because being listed on a social or beneficiary register does not, by itself, establish that a household actually received a cash payment.
The latest audit finding therefore puts renewed pressure on the Federal Government to provide detailed evidence of its poverty-reduction expenditure and demonstrate that funds budgeted for vulnerable Nigerians reached the people for whom they were intended.
For citizens and accountability advocates, the central question is no longer simply how much government says it has spent on cash transfers, but whether there is sufficient evidence to show who received the money, how much they received and when the payments were made.
