Missing Cash Transfer Billions: Is the Nigerian Government Alleviating or Deepening Poverty?
SOStainabilityWeekly
Edited by Oke Epia, E-mail: sostainability01@gmail.com | WhatsApp: +234 8034000706
Flakes and Flaks
Since reports of alleged misapplication or misappropriation of funds meant for poor people broke, there have been stringent calls for accountability from the federal government. Civil society, media organisations, and certain oversight bodies are demanding explanations. Even politicians and political parties have necessarily latched onto the trend to gain advantage. Eerily, the government has been silent as if N33.75 billion is a meaningless drop in the ocean.
The 2024 Audit Report of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) revealed disturbing discrepancies in the disbursement of monies for poor citizens in the 2023 financial year. According to the Punch newspaper, eight audit queries were raised regarding cash transfers amounting to N33.751bn to 3,295,207 households supposedly drawn from the National Social Register (NSR) across 35 states. According to the report quoted by the newspaper, “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 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. All efforts to obtain access to the REMITA statement were obstructed and denied by NCTO accounts staff, thereby frustrating the audit process.”
In the same report, the OAUGF queried another N36.74bn worth of payments made without prepayment audit. “None of the paid vouchers were pre-audited or checked by the Internal Audit as required by extant regulations,” the report said. In yet another query, NTCO reportedly made 101 payments worth N4.616 billion for various expenditures and declined to present the paid vouchers for audit examination. That was not all. The auditor’s report also flagged N350.18m in unaccounted payments made to state coordinators of the NTCO for the enrolment of poor Nigerians into the scheme. The Punch reported that, “supporting documents, including beneficiary lists, photographs of activities, signed attendance registers, enrolment reports and acknowledgements from individuals who received payments, were also not attached to the vouchers.” The report further queried the whereabouts of N393.71m in unused enrolment funds claimed to have been returned by nine states but could not be verified by receipts into the Consolidated Revenue Fund. While the Auditor-General’s Office did not specifically establish any financial malfeasance, it recommended that officials of the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO) appear before the National Assembly Committees on Public Accounts to clear the grey areas and that they be made to refund the billions in unaccounted funds to the treasury if satisfactory explanations could not be provided. The OAuGF has discharged its brief. And boldly so. The buck now rests with the National Assembly. But while Nigerians await the next step, it would be in the interest of the President Bola Tinubu administration to order a forensic investigation into this scandal and go the whole hog to bring culprits to book. It must seize this moment, unlike in 2023/2024 when it failed to bring to account those found wanting in a N585.2 million scandal involving the minister in charge of social safety net. Although the minister was suspended from office, the administration failed to send a strong signal that it would protect the poor at all costs.
President Tinubu must wield the big stick on this deeply worrisome scandal. This is not just because of the widening trust deficit in government and its institutions, but because the administration has recently announced plans to spend $3.05 billion on social investments. If the government cannot account for what it spent in 2023, why should it be trusted to transparently deliver on another whopping sum of cash in the name of the same poor citizens whose lives and living conditions continue to nosedive by the day? For a country with extreme poverty running riot across the four corners, this is not how to alleviate poverty. For development partners like the World Bank that offer financial aid and loans to the government in the name of alleviating poverty, tougher accountability measures and stringent performance metrics must be put in place as conditions for providing support forthwith.
