The cash transfer office answered the Auditor-General in September. The audit report records "No response" to all eight of its queries

On 7 September Vero Record reported that the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation's 2024 Annual Report on Non-compliance, Volume I, records "No response" from the National Cash Transfer Office (NCTO), Abuja, against all eight queries raised about its 2023 accounts. The NCTO has since answered in public. We went back to the report, which we downloaded from oaugf.ng, and read the NCTO section again page by page. It runs from printed page 85 to page 94. Under every one of the eight issues, the heading "Management's Response" is followed by the words "No response", and the Auditor's Evaluation says that since management failed to respond, the findings "remain valid until the management implements the recommendations."

Public debate has centred on Issue 5. It records that "Electronic transfers amounting to N33,751,080,000.00" were made to "three million, two hundred and ninety five thousand, two hundred and seven (3,295,207) households/ beneficiaries" mined to the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register in 35 states for 2023. According to the auditors, the paid vouchers did not carry the beneficiaries' full details, and the REMITA statement comparing the people paid with those on the registers was not presented. This, the report says, made it "difficult to ascertain whether the beneficiaries who received the funds were genuine". It adds: "All efforts to obtain access to the REMITA statement were obstructed and denied by NTCO [sic] accounts staff, thereby frustrating the audit process."

On our own arithmetic, which is analysis and not a figure from the report, N33,751,080,000.00 spread over 3,295,207 households averages about N10,242 per household. The report does not say how many payments each household received.

Daily Trust carried the NCTO's statement on 10 September 2026, and a republication of Punch's report carried it the same day. According to those reports, the office said the 2023 National Beneficiary Register list "was transmitted to the auditors on Friday, 18 April 2025 at 11:48 a.m" and that the 2024 and 2025 registers were sent to the audit team "on Tuesday, 21 April 2026 at 6:25 p.m". It also said its project accountant kept email correspondence showing that the REMITA payment report had been shared. And it said that "an audit query or observation is not, by itself, a final determination that public funds were stolen, diverted, misappropriated or lost." We have seen the statement only as it was reported, and we have not seen the emails it describes.

That last point matches the report. An audit query is not a finding of theft, and no court has found wrongdoing at the NCTO. What the documents show is a disagreement about the record. The office says it sent the key material to the auditors, one set more than a year before the report's PDF was created (its metadata gives 25 July 2026). The report says the REMITA statement was never presented, and it records no management response on this issue or any other.

Based on the press reports we reviewed, the September statement deals only with the N33,751,080,000.00 transfer query. It does not address the other seven issues. One of those is larger than the transfer query. Our 7 September report wrongly described the transfer query as the largest, and we correct that here.

The larger one is Issue 3. It records that "A total of two hundred and fifteen (215) payment vouchers for SS, IDA & output base for the month of December, 2023, amounting to N36,743,944,916.76" were raised and paid "without internal audit checks or prepayment audit", and that the Internal Audit Unit checked them only after payment. The auditors also note that the World Bank's Project Appraisal Document for the scale-up programme (NASSP SU PAD-4674, 23rd November, 2021) said internal audit would work "without adopting the prepayment audit system." The report thus sets a Nigerian regulation beside the lender's project design, and the two conflict.

The other six unanswered queries cover N4,616,158,349.69 in 101 payments whose vouchers "were not presented for audit examination" (Issue 1); N350,182,400.00 of N3,090,762,247.00 in state enrolment funds left "unaccounted for" (Issue 2; we checked that the N2,740,579,847.00 vouchered plus the N350,182,400.00 balance equals the stated total); N89,511,135.70 of store items not taken on ledger charge, with the ledger last updated in 2020 (Issue 4); N17,421,893.50 spent on diesel through staff cash advances (Issue 6); a N280,420,799.99 advance to payment service providers without an Advance Payment Guarantee and with "no evidence that due process was followed" in their selection (Issue 7); and N393,714,161.00 of refunds from nine State Cash Transfer Units with no document showing the money was credited to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (Issue 8).

We have not added the queries into a single total. The report does not say whether the December 2023 vouchers in Issue 3 include transfers counted in Issue 5, so a combined sum could count the same payments twice.

For each issue, the report asks the National Programme Manager to account to the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly, to recover and remit the sums to the Treasury, and to forward evidence of remittance. It cites sanctions under paragraphs 3106, 3115 and 3129 of the Financial Regulations (2009). These are recommendations. We could find no record of whether the committees have scheduled a hearing on the NCTO section, or of whether the emails the office describes will be put before them.

If a hearing is held, it is where both statements can be tested: the auditors' account that access was "obstructed and denied", and the office's account that it sent the material, with times given to the minute.

What this rests on

Primary: the Auditor-General's 2024 Annual Report on Non-compliance, Vol. I, printed pages 85 to 94 (NCTO section), downloaded from oaugf.ng and read in full for that section (Grade A). The NCTO's rebuttal is known only through press reports: Daily Trust and a republication of Punch (Grade B). The per-household average and the Issue 2 re-addition are our own arithmetic (Grade C, labelled in the text).

What this does not establish

We have not seen the NCTO emails of 18 April 2025 and 21 April 2026 or the REMITA report, so we cannot say which account is right about whether access was given. We found no NCTO or ministry page carrying the statement. We do not know whether the Public Accounts Committees have scheduled a hearing. The PDF creation date is not necessarily the date the audit was finalised. Nothing in the record establishes that any funds were stolen or misused. These are audit queries, not findings of a court.