ABUJA, Nigeria — President Bola Tinubu has ordered a comprehensive forensic audit of Nigeria’s federal payroll systems, ministries and government agencies following anti-corruption findings involving fictitious agencies, “ghost workers” and weaknesses in administrative controls. Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele will oversee the review, presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga said. The directive follows an Aug. 19 Federal Executive Council resolution responding to findings by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, or ICPC.
The audit will scrutinize the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, known as IPPIS, along with government payroll, personnel, pension and financial-management platforms. Investigators will seek to determine how fictitious or ineligible people entered government payrolls and examine identity, biometric and bank-account safeguards. The review will also examine links between IPPIS and platforms including the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, Remita and the Treasury Single Account to determine whether losses resulted from technical flaws, weak procedures or deliberate manipulation.
A second part of the investigation will examine federal ministries, departments, commissions, councils and other government bodies to establish which institutions legally exist and how they gained access to budgets, offices and official government systems. “President Tinubu expects the exercise to go beyond identifying individual cases of fraud or administrative failure,” Onanuga said, adding that the government wants to close systemic loopholes and strengthen verification and accountability. Tinubu ordered the review to meet what the presidency called the “highest standards of independence, professionalism and forensic integrity.”
The directive follows an expanding scandal over organizations that allegedly operated as federal agencies without legal authority. The ICPC said its investigation into the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council found that its purported director-general, Adeniyi Adeyemi, was never appointed by the federal government and that the organization had not been created by legislation or executive order. The commission recommended Adeyemi’s prosecution and administrative sanctions against public officials whose actions or negligence may have enabled the organization to operate. Investigators have also reported discovering other allegedly fictitious agencies, while a separate ICPC investigation announced this month led Tinubu to order the suspension of three permanent secretaries and the arrest of another alleged fake-agency promoter.
Nigeria has struggled with payroll fraud for decades despite repeated attempts to digitize federal personnel records. IPPIS was introduced in 2007 partly to eliminate “ghost workers,” a term used for fictitious, duplicate or otherwise ineligible people who receive salaries from public funds. World Bank assessments have credited biometric enrollment under the system with identifying tens of thousands of fictitious employees and generating substantial savings, while also documenting continuing weaknesses in payroll and personnel management. The latest audit therefore represents another attempt to strengthen a system originally designed nearly two decades ago to prevent precisely the type of abuse now under investigation.
The investigation carries wider significance for Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and one of its largest economies, as the government seeks to manage tight public finances while pursuing economic reforms. Weak payroll controls and unauthorized access to government systems can divert money from infrastructure, health, education and other public services, while questions over financial oversight can undermine confidence in public institutions. The audit team will be given access to government systems and records and will work with the ICPC so that its review complements continuing investigations, prosecutions and efforts to recover public funds, the presidency said
