Unaccounted ₦33.7bn cash transfers: BudgIT urges FG to prioritize subsidy savings accountability over transparency dashboard

Civic tech and public finance watchdog BudgIT has called on the Federal Government to halt the rollout of transparency portals and prioritize real-time accounting for hundreds of billions of naira routed into social safety net programs.

The demand follows a revelation by the Auditor-General for the Federation, disclosing that the Federal Government failed to provide sufficient documentary evidence to substantiate that ₦33.75 billion in direct cash transfers reached its target audience of over 3.29 million vulnerable households.

The timing has drawn scrutiny from fiscal policy analysts.

Recall that weeks ago, the Ministry of Finance announced an ambitious tracking portal designed to allow citizens to monitor public spending across Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Areas.

BudgIT noted that launching forward-looking dashboards while failing to account for past outlays renders such initiatives performative.

According to the audit findings, the National Social Safety Nets Project lacked complete audit trails, verifiable banking records, and biometric verification confirming that the funds reached genuine citizens in need.

This reporting failure comes amid expanded fiscal commitments under Nigeria’s ongoing economic reforms, where BudgIT’s analysis identifies approximately ₦423.8 billion funneled into incremental welfare vehicles such as the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), the Consumer Credit Corporation (CREDICORP), and the MOFI Real Estate Investment Fund.

BudgIT urged the administration to fix systemic loopholes in subsidy savings redeployment before launching additional digital monitoring tools, arguing that visibility dashboards mean little without verifiable underlying data and enforcement mechanisms.

The organization further reiterated its call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sign the federal audit service bill into law noting that assenting to the bill would grant the Office of the Auditor-General full operational and financial independence, empowering it to penalize non-compliant Ministries, Departments, and Agencies directly rather than issuing advisory reports that are routinely disregarded.