Auditor-General has flagged N33.75 billion in electronic cash transfers made in 2023 to more than 3.29 million households, saying the National Cash Transfer Office failed to provide evidence that the funds reached genuine beneficiaries.
The findings appear in the Auditor-General for the Federation’s 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance and Internal Control Weaknesses, which examined the 2023 financial year at the National Cash Transfer Office in Abuja.
According to the report, electronic transfers totalling N33,751,080,000.00 were paid to 3,295,207 households drawn from the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states.
“The paid vouchers for the payments above did not contain the full details of the 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 stated.
Auditors said staff of the office obstructed efforts to access the required Remita payment records, “thereby frustrating the audit process.”
The Auditor-General warned of possible loss of public funds and payments to ineligible or fictitious persons. The National Programme Manager has been asked to account for the sum before the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly and to provide proof that the money reached the intended recipients. Any amount that cannot be satisfactorily explained should be recovered and returned to the Treasury.
The report also raised separate queries over N36.74 billion paid without prepayment audit checks, N4.616 billion in expenditures for which paid vouchers were not presented, and other undocumented disbursements, including N350.18 million sent to state coordinators.
Management of the National Cash Transfer Office did not respond to any of the audit queries, the report noted.
