Keypoints:
- Federal payroll faces forensic audit
- ICPC uncovered 908 ghost workers
- Alleged fake agencies exposed control gaps
THE Nigerian government has ordered a full forensic audit of its payroll, accounting and administrative systems after investigations into alleged fake federal agencies exposed weaknesses that officials fear could also allow ghost workers and fraudulent personnel records to penetrate the public service.
The exercise will scrutinise the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, or IPPIS, and other government controls to determine how unauthorised entities were able to obtain official administrative and Treasury Single Account codes. The wider concern is whether the same weaknesses could be exploited to place fictitious employees on the federal payroll.
₦9.5tn raises the stakes
Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele announced the audit after a Federal Executive Council meeting chaired by President Bola Tinubu.
Oyedele said about ₦9.5tn (about $7.1bn)had been allocated to incremental salary and allowance payments, making the integrity of systems processing personnel expenditure increasingly important.
The figure does not represent money found to have been stolen, lost or paid to ghost workers. Rather, the scale of the government’s wage commitments has sharpened concerns about preventing fraudulent personnel from benefiting from public funds.
The audit continues a long-running effort to clean up Nigeria’s public payroll. Africa Briefing previously reported on Tinubu’s crackdown on Nigerian salary fraud, including concerns about former government employees continuing to receive public salaries.
Ghost workers already uncovered
Evidence of payroll fraud is already substantial.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission said an IPPIS investigation uncovered 908 ghost workers and that nearly ₦942m in salaries illicitly paid to them was being recovered.
That finding gives the government’s new forensic examination greater urgency and raises questions about whether further fictitious workers remain hidden within federal ministries, departments and agencies.
Tinubu has previously turned to forensic investigations as part of efforts to strengthen public financial controls, including an earlier forensic audit involving Nigeria’s central bank.
Fake agencies expose control failures
The latest audit follows an ICPC investigation into the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
The Presidency said the body had never been legally established and ordered the ICPC on July 7 to investigate how it acquired the appearance of official legitimacy.
Tinubu specifically asked investigators to identify weaknesses in government procedures that may have been exploited.
The Budget Office later acknowledged that ₦1.303bn had been appropriated for the disputed PEAC/PFIPC structure but said no money was released or spent, no lawful recruitment took place and no personnel were enrolled on the payroll.
The distinction is significant. The appropriation showed how far the disputed entity had travelled through federal administrative processes, while expenditure controls ultimately stopped public money from being disbursed.
Tinubu suspends senior officials
The controversy widened after investigators uncovered another entity, the National Brands Development and Made-in-Nigeria Special Project Office.
Following an ICPC briefing, Tinubu ordered the arrest of its promoter, Nwabueze Buchi George, and suspended permanent secretaries M.S. Danjuma, Nadungu Gagare and Richard P. Pheelangwah pending further investigation.
The suspensions are administrative measures and do not constitute findings of criminal guilt.
George has challenged the ICPC’s description of the organisation as fake. He subsequently published what he said was an October 2025 letter from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation appointing him National Coordinator and Executive Director of the project office.
The authenticity and legal implications of that document remain matters for investigators.
Audit faces bigger questions
The forensic review must now establish how purported agencies obtained government codes and administrative recognition, who authorised those processes and whether similar entities remain embedded elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.
More importantly, investigators will need to determine whether weaknesses that enabled allegedly unauthorised organisations to penetrate government structures also allowed fictitious personnel to access salaries.
The scandal therefore goes beyond another ghost-worker clean-up. It has become a test of whether Nigeria’s increasingly digital public-finance architecture can reliably distinguish legitimate government institutions and employees from fraudulent ones.
With Tinubu’s economic reforms becoming an important political issue ahead of the 2027 election, the credibility of the administration’s fiscal programme will increasingly depend on demonstrating that money saved or raised through painful reforms is protected from waste and fraud.
Africa Briefing has also examined how Nigeria’s political campaign is testing Tinubu’s reform record, making accountability over public spending an increasingly important part of the wider economic debate.
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