By Chike Ofili
The National Cash Transfer Office, NCTO, has pushed back against suggestions that an Auditor-General’s query over ₦33.75 billion disbursed to vulnerable Nigerians in 2023 amounted to an indictment for fraud, insisting that it has documentary evidence showing that beneficiary lists and payment records were supplied to auditors.
In a statement on Thursday, the NCTO said an audit query or observation was not, by itself, a final determination that public funds had been stolen, diverted, misappropriated or lost.
The clarification followed the 2024 annual report of the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation, OAuGF, which raised questions over whether sufficient evidence was provided to establish that ₦33.75 billion in cash transfers intended for about 3.29 million vulnerable households in 2023 reached genuine beneficiaries.
The finding was contained in the Auditor-General’s report on non-compliance and internal control weaknesses across federal ministries, departments and agencies.
While acknowledging the constitutional responsibilities of the OAuGF, the NCTO said it was necessary to correct what it described as an impression created by the published observation concerning the electronic transfers.
According to the agency, the payments were made electronically through the programme’s established payment architecture to identified and eligible beneficiaries and were subjected to several layers of verification.
It said beneficiaries were not paid simply because their names appeared on a submitted list, explaining that payments were matched against beneficiary records maintained in the programme’s information systems.
“The programme’s payment control architecture is specifically designed to prevent payments outside the approved beneficiary population,” the NCTO said.
It therefore rejected any suggestion that the ₦33.751 billion represented payments to unidentified or unverifiable persons.
The cash transfer office said the underlying beneficiary records were maintained electronically and could be reconciled against corresponding electronic payment records.
It argued that because the programme operates nationwide and covers millions of beneficiaries, maintaining and transmitting the records electronically was more practical than printing millions of individual records and attaching them physically to payment vouchers.
More significantly, the NCTO said it possesses an electronic trail showing that the beneficiary information sought by the auditors was actually submitted.
According to the agency, email correspondence in its possession showed that the 2023 National Beneficiary Register, NBR, list was transmitted to the auditors at 11:48 am on April 18, 2025.
It further said documentary email evidence showed that the 2024 and 2025 NBR records were transmitted to the audit team at 6:25pm on April 21, 2026.
The NCTO said copies of the correspondence would accompany its public clarification, arguing that the emails carried identifiable dates and times and could therefore be independently verified.
On that basis, the agency disputed any suggestion that records needed to establish the identities of beneficiaries had been deliberately withheld during the audit.
The NCTO similarly challenged the Auditor-General’s observation concerning REMITA records.
It said the programme accountant retained email evidence indicating that the relevant REMITA payment report had also been transmitted to the audit team.
According to the agency, the existence of contemporaneous email records provides an objective means of determining whether the payment information was supplied during the audit process.
The NCTO maintained that failure to print millions of electronic beneficiary records and physically attach them to individual payment vouchers should not be interpreted as evidence that beneficiary identification or payment records did not exist.
It said the critical question should instead be whether the electronic records exist, whether they were transmitted and whether they can be reconciled against the payments made.
“NCTO therefore strongly rejects any interpretation suggesting that ₦33.751 billion was paid to unidentified beneficiaries or that the Office deliberately concealed beneficiary and payment records from the auditors,” the agency said.
It maintained that the beneficiary database and REMITA payment information remain available for independent verification and reconciliation, effectively throwing the dispute back to the audit process to determine whether the electronic records substantiate the ₦33.75 billion in payments.
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