₦33.75 billion Without a Trail: Who Actually Received the Money?

There are some numbers that should make every Nigerian stop scrolling. ₦33.75 billion or is one of them.Not because the figure is merely large. Nigeria has become depressingly accustomed to billions disappearing into the vocabulary of government accounting.

What makes this particular number different is the question attached to it: Who received the money? That should be an easy question to answer.

Instead, according to the Auditor-General for the Federation, the government has not provided enough evidence to establish that ₦33.75 billion transferred to more than 3.29 million households and beneficiaries actually reached the genuine people it was intended for.

And that is where this story becomes bigger than another audit query. It becomes a story about trust. It becomes a story about accountability.

And, frankly, it becomes a story about whether Nigeria's public institutions are capable of following public money from the moment it leaves the treasury to the moment it reaches the citizen it was meant to help.

The National Cash Transfer Office handled the payments in 2023.The beneficiaries were supposedly drawn from official government registers. The money was electronically transferred. So where is the trail?

THE MISSING DOCUMENT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

The auditors wanted something remarkably basic: a Remita statement showing who actually received the payments. That document should have allowed them to compare the people who received the money with those listed in the National Social Register and National Beneficiary Register.

Simple.Names on one side. Names on the other. Match them. Verify them. Close the file.

But apparently, it wasn't that simple.The required Remita records were not produced. And the Auditor-General says attempts to obtain them were obstructed by accounts staff at the National Cash Transfer Office.

Read that again.Auditors were trying to verify the destination of ₦33.75 billion, and the records needed to perform that verification were allegedly withheld. This is precisely the sort of thing that should set off every alarm bell in a functioning system of public accountability.

It does not prove that ₦33.75 billion was stolen. It does not prove that millions of fictitious beneficiaries were paid. But it creates something almost as damaging: reasonable doubt about whether the government can prove where the money went.

THE POOR CANNOT AFFORD ACCOUNTING MYSTERIES

There is an especially cruel irony here. This was not money budgeted for luxury offices. It was not money for presidential banquets. It was not money for another government building. It was money supposedly destined for some of the country's most vulnerable citizens. People who need ₦10,000, ₦20,000 or ₦50,000 to survive do not have the luxury of losing track of their money. Yet billions intended for them can apparently enter the machinery of government and emerge surrounded by questions.

That is unacceptable. If a poor Nigerian cannot prove where one government payment went, that person may be accused of dishonesty.But when government cannot prove where ₦33.75 billion went, we call it an audit query. Perhaps we need to rethink that language.

THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT MONEY

The real scandal, if there is one, is not necessarily that money was stolen.The deeper scandal is that a system handling billions of naira appears to have lacked — or failed to produce — the basic documentation necessary to prove that the money reached the right people. That distinction matters.Because accusations should be based on evidence.But so should exoneration.If every naira reached a genuine beneficiary, then the evidence should settle the matter.Produce the Remita records.
Produce the beneficiary confirmations.Match the names.Show the transactions.Let the public see the audit trail.f the money is clean, the paperwork should make that clear.

AND THEN THERE ARE MORE BILLIONS

Unfortunately, the ₦33.75 billion query does not stand alone.The Auditor-General reportedly raised eight separate queries involving the National Cash Transfer Office.

There were questions over another ₦36.74 billion paid without the required internal audit or pre-payment checks.There was also ₦4.62 billion for which auditors said supporting payment vouchers were not produced. Hundreds of millions more attracted questions over beneficiary enrolment, returned funds, payments to service providers and other control failures.

At some point, the issue stops being about one missing document. It becomes a question about the architecture of the entire system. How many controls failed?

How many officials signed off? Who was supposed to verify the beneficiaries? Who was supposed to verify the payments? Who checked the checks? And who was watching the people responsible for watching the money?

NIGERIANS DESERVE MORE THAN “TRUST US”

For decades, Nigerians have been asked to trust government.Trust the process.Trust the ministry.Trust the agency. Trust the figures.Trust the officials.

But democracy does not run on trust alone.It runs on evidence.

And public money demands an even higher standard. If government says ₦33.75 billion was distributed to 3.29 million households, then it should be able to show Nigerians precisely where that money landed.

Not eventually.Not after another committee sits.Not after another audit report.

Now.The Auditor-General has recommended that the official responsible for the programme account for the money before the National Assembly's Public Accounts Committees. That is exactly where this matter belongs.And the hearing should not become another Nigerian ritual where officials arrive with files, offer explanations, promise reforms and disappear into the sunset.

The questions should be brutally simple: Who was paid?How much did each person receive? When was each payment made? Which register contained each beneficiary? Where is the Remita evidence? Who authorised the payments? And if the money cannot be accounted for, who is responsible?

ACCOUNTABILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL

Nigeria cannot continue running poverty programmes with rich intentions and weak paperwork. The more vulnerable the beneficiary, the stronger the controls should be.

The more money involved, the clearer the audit trail should be.And the more aggressively officials resist legitimate scrutiny, the more determined the scrutiny should become.This is not about embarrassing the National Cash Transfer Office. It is not about scoring political points. It is about something much more fundamental:public money belongs to the public.

₦33.75 billion cannot become an accounting ghost. If the money reached 3.29 million genuine households, prove it.If there were errors, identify them. If there were ineligible beneficiaries, expose them. If public funds were lost, recover them.

And if anyone deliberately frustrated efforts to establish the truth, they should answer for that conduct.Because Nigerians have heard enough stories about billions.
What they want now is something much simpler. The truth.

And in this case, the truth should have a Remita statement attached to it.

By Emmanuel Emeke Asiwe(EEA) Pulisher/Editor-in-Chief