By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D

There are questions that should never be difficult for a government to answer. Who was paid? How much was paid? When was the money paid? And where is the evidence that the person for whom the money was intended actually received it?

These are elementary questions of public accounting. They become even more important when the money belongs to some of the poorest people in Nigeria.

Yet, according to the 2024 Annual Report on Non-Compliance and Internal Control Weaknesses by the Auditor General of the Federation, the Federal Government could not provide sufficient evidence to establish that ₦33.751 billion recorded as cash transfers to more than 3.29 million vulnerable households and beneficiaries actually reached genuine recipients.

Let us be careful from the outset. The Auditor General did not say ₦33.751 billion was stolen. He did not establish that the entire sum disappeared.

What the audit established is sufficiently troubling without exaggeration: the National Cash Transfer Office could not provide auditors with adequate evidence to verify that the money reached the people it was supposed to reach.

And therein lies the scandal of accountability.

The electronic transfers were recorded as having been made to 3,295,207 households and beneficiaries drawn from the National Social Register and enrolled on the National Beneficiary Register across 35 states in 2023.

But when auditors came knocking, the payment vouchers did not contain the full details of beneficiaries. More remarkably, the Remita statement needed to reconcile the payments with those listed on the registers was not presented for audit.

According to the Auditor General, attempts to obtain access to the statement were obstructed by accounts staff.

Pause there.

Government says it paid. Government has registers containing those it says it paid. There is an electronic payment platform through which the transactions should be traceable.

Yet government’s own constitutionally established auditor could not obtain the records required to connect those three points conclusively.

So, who got the poor man’s money?

That question assumes greater significance when we remember the economic circumstances in which these payments were supposed to provide relief.

Millions of Nigerians are struggling with the costs of food, transportation, healthcare, rent and education. For such households, a government cash transfer is not an accounting entry.

It can be food. It can be medicine. It can keep a child in school. It can be the thin line between survival and desperation.

That is why money appropriated for the poor carries a moral burden beyond the ordinary obligations of public expenditure.

Stealing from government is corruption. But allowing money intended for desperately poor citizens to disappear into an administrative fog, whether through incompetence, negligence or criminality, is something even more disturbing.

And the ₦33.751 billion is not the only cause for concern.

The Auditor General also queried ₦36.744 billion paid through 215 payment vouchers without the required prepayment audit. Another ₦4.616 billion in expenditures was unsupported by paid vouchers presented for examination. Other queries involved enrolment payments, procurement and expenditure records.

Taken together, the findings raise serious questions about the controls surrounding an institution entrusted with protecting Nigeria’s most vulnerable citizens.

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has consequently called for investigations into more than ₦78.8 billion in expenditures connected with the social protection programmes.

Human rights lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) has separately asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to investigate the ₦33.75 billion and recover funds if investigations establish that money was diverted.

Those calls deserve attention. But Nigeria must go further than another investigation that dominates headlines for several weeks before disappearing into the country’s institutional memory.

The fundamental question is whether Nigeria can build a social protection system that citizens can independently trust.

This matters because government is not abandoning cash transfers. Nor should it.

Social protection is indispensable in a country where millions struggle with poverty, particularly after economic reforms have imposed significant hardship on households.

That makes the Auditor General’s findings not merely a story about yesterday’s money. They are a warning about tomorrow’s billions.

Before more money travels through the same machinery, Nigerians deserve to know whether the weaknesses already identified have been repaired.

Government should therefore provide a comprehensive and verifiable audit trail of the disputed transfers while protecting beneficiaries’ personal data. Accountability does not require publishing poor people’s bank details.

What it requires is verifiable information: how many beneficiaries were paid in each state, how much was transferred, how many transactions succeeded, how many failed, what sums were reversed and whether every payment can be reconciled against an authenticated beneficiary.

Technology makes this possible. Indeed, technology is precisely why the inability to verify electronic transfers is so troubling.

Cash can disappear without footprints. Digital payments are supposed to leave them. Every transaction generates data. Every transfer should have a trail.

Nigeria cannot celebrate digital government when money is being disbursed and suddenly rediscover analogue confusion when auditors ask for evidence.

There is another institution that must not escape responsibility: the National Assembly. The Auditor General submits reports so that Parliament, particularly its Public Accounts Committees, can demand explanations and enforce accountability.

Audit reports should not become annual catalogues of unanswered questions. Officials responsible for the queried expenditures should appear before the appropriate committees. Records should be produced. Transactions should be reconciled.

Where explanations are satisfactory, Nigerians should be told. Where money cannot be accounted for, it should be recovered. And where evidence establishes criminal conduct, those responsible should face prosecution regardless of office or political affiliation.

There is an even larger issue.

For decades, Nigeria’s poorest citizens have frequently existed as numbers in government programmes. Millions of beneficiaries. Millions of households. Billions disbursed. Thousands empowered.

The numbers are announced at podiums and displayed in colourful presentations. But the real test of social investment is not how much government says it has spent. It is whether the intended citizen received the benefit.

A government may truthfully say that ₦33.751 billion left its account. That does not answer the more important question. Where did it arrive?

At a time when Nigerians are repeatedly being asked to endure the consequences of economic reform, accountability becomes even more important.

Government cannot preach sacrifice to citizens while tolerating opacity in programmes designed to cushion that sacrifice.

It cannot demand patience from the poor and provide incomplete records when asked what became of money appropriated for them.

The Auditor General has asked the questions. Civil society has amplified them.

Government must now produce the records, reconcile the payments, identify failures, recover whatever cannot be accounted for and prosecute wrongdoing where the evidence establishes it.

Because behind every unverified social intervention payment is potentially a hungry family that government says it helped.

There may be a mother who never received the money recorded against her existence. There may be a child whose hardship was supposed to have been cushioned. There may be a citizen whose poverty has become somebody else’s statistic.

And until the audit trail is complete, one question deserves to follow every announcement of billions spent fighting poverty in Nigeria: Who got the poor man’s money?

Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC

Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com

WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

By Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan

Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of youth empowerment programmes. For years, we have trained, mentored, equipped and “empowered” young people. We have organised boot camps, distributed starter packs, presented certificates and encouraged a generation to become entrepreneurs.
Yet one uncomfortable question remains: empowered to do what, and within what kind of economy?

“Start a business” has gradually become one of our default responses to youth unemployment. The intention is understandable. Entrepreneurship creates businesses, jobs and innovation. Nigeria certainly needs more of it.
But entrepreneurship cannot become an escape route from the harder responsibility of building an economy in which young people can actually succeed.
A young Nigerian can learn tailoring, catering, coding, photography or digital marketing. She can attend an entrepreneurship programme and write an impressive business plan. But after the training comes reality: How does she finance the business? Where are her customers? What does electricity cost? How does she move goods? Can she afford equipment? And how long can a young business survive while waiting for the market to reward determination? These are not motivational questions. They are structural ones.

Training Is Not the Same as Empowerment
We need to be careful about how easily we use the word empowerment.
A three-day training programme may transfer knowledge. A sewing machine may provide a starting point. A grant may give a promising business its first opportunity. All are useful interventions.
But none, on its own, constitutes an empowerment ecosystem.
The World Bank’s 2026 State of the Nigerian Youth report identifies persistent barriers across education and skills, employment, and financial and digital inclusion. The ILO has similarly highlighted skills mismatch as a challenge in Nigeria’s labour market.
This matters because we cannot continue training young people simply for the sake of saying they have been trained. Skills programmes must increasingly answer a tougher question: where is the economic demand for this skill?

Government, educational institutions and the private sector need to talk to one another far more seriously. Training should connect to sectors where opportunities are emerging, employers should have a greater voice in skills development, and young people need practical pathways from learning to work and enterprise.
Otherwise, we risk producing certificates without producing livelihoods.

Capital Changes the Conversation
Then comes perhaps the most stubborn obstacle: money.
Ideas require capital. Equipment requires capital. Inventory requires capital. Growth requires capital.
IFC research has identified access to finance as a major constraint for Nigerian MSMEs. A recent IFC project assessment notes that more than 95 per cent of Nigerian MSMEs cite access to finance as a major obstacle to growth, while more than half lack access to working capital.

So when we tell a young person to “become an entrepreneur”, we must also ask whether our financial system gives that entrepreneur a realistic chance.
This does not mean indiscriminately handing out money. Sustainable empowerment requires smarter financing: credible grants for viable early-stage ideas, affordable credit, guarantees, patient capital and financing structures that recognise that a 24-year-old entrepreneur is unlikely to own the collateral demanded by conventional lenders.
And importantly, finance should be accompanied by mentorship, market access and business support. Evidence from earlier Nigerian youth-employment programmes has shown the importance of combining training with access to capital when self-employment is the objective.

Not Every Young Person Must Become an Entrepreneur
There is another truth we rarely say loudly enough.
Not every young Nigerian needs to become a business owner.
Some will be exceptional entrepreneurs. Others will become exceptional engineers, technicians, researchers, teachers, designers, managers, health professionals and skilled employees.
That is not failure.
A functioning economy needs both entrepreneurs and productive employees. Youth policy therefore cannot be reduced to teaching everybody how to start a small business. Nigeria also needs companies that can grow, industries that can expand and an economy capable of creating decent work at scale.
The real objective should be economic agency: giving young people credible choices about how they build productive lives.

From Programmes to Ecosystems
This is where the empowerment conversation needs to change.
Success should not simply be measured by how many youths attended a programme, how many certificates were issued or how many starter packs were distributed. We should be asking what happened afterwards.
How many businesses survived after two years? How many jobs did they create? How many participants gained sustainable employment? Did incomes improve? Did businesses gain access to markets and finance? Did the programme address a real economic opportunity?
That also means changing how empowerment programmes are designed and reported. Too often, the most visible moment is the launch: officials make speeches, beneficiaries receive equipment, photographs are taken and impressive participation numbers are announced. But the real test begins after the ceremony. Six months or a year later, are those businesses still operating? Were beneficiaries able to find customers, obtain additional finance, maintain their equipment and grow beyond subsistence? Public institutions and corporate sponsors should be willing to publish those outcomes, not simply the number of people who passed through a programme.

This is not about dismissing existing interventions. It is about demanding more from them. If an initiative works, scale it. If beneficiaries repeatedly encounter the same barriers, redesign it. If a training programme produces little economic value, stop measuring attendance as success. Empowerment policy should learn from outcomes rather than celebrate inputs.
Those are harder questions. But they are the questions that distinguish empowerment as publicity from empowerment as policy.

Nigeria’s young people do not lack ambition. What many lack is an environment that converts ambition into opportunity. So, yes, teach entrepreneurship.

Fund promising businesses.
Celebrate young founders. Encourage innovation. But let us stop pretending that entrepreneurship alone can compensate for weak infrastructure, inaccessible finance, skills mismatch and insufficient productive employment.

The next generation does not need another slogan telling it to hustle harder; it needs an economy that makes hard work worth something. Because ultimately, youth empowerment will be judged not by how many young people we tell to become entrepreneurs, but by how many are genuinely equipped and enabled to build productive lives. And that is why the narrative matters.

Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan
Strategic Communications & Reputation Management Expert | Founder, The Narrative Matters®

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D

Nigeria has never suffered from a shortage of institutions created to fight corruption. We have the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. We have the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. We have the Code of Conduct Bureau. We have the Code of Conduct Tribunal. We have the police. We have courts. We have laws prohibiting practically every conceivable manifestation of public corruption.

Yet corruption has proved remarkably unimpressed.

Now comes another proposition. The leadership of the Code of Conduct Tribunal is pushing for the Tribunal to be transformed into a full fledged National Anti Corruption Court, with seven judicial divisions and 37 judges dedicated to corruption cases.

The attraction is immediately obvious.

The CCT says it inherited about 1,037 unresolved cases, some of which had remained unattended for between five and ten years. Under the proposed arrangement, corruption trials would proceed through a summary procedure designed to conclude cases within six weeks of arraignment.

Six weeks? In a country where politically exposed defendants can spend years travelling through adjournments, preliminary objections, interlocutory appeals and changes of counsel before the substance of allegations against them is determined, six weeks sounds almost revolutionary.

The frustration behind the proposal is therefore understandable.

Justice delayed is not merely justice denied to defendants or victims. In corruption cases, delay can become a defence strategy.

Witnesses disappear. Memories fade. Investigators are transferred. Governments change. Political alliances shift. Public attention moves elsewhere.

Eventually, a scandal that once dominated newspaper headlines becomes another dusty case file.

So, there is merit in asking whether Nigeria needs a judicial structure specifically designed to prevent corruption trials from becoming marathons.

But before creating another institution, we should ask a more uncomfortable question.

Is the absence of a specialised court really the principal reason Nigeria struggles to punish corruption?

That question matters because Nigeria has a familiar response to institutional failure.

We create another institution.

When an agency is ineffective, we establish a committee. When the committee disappoints, we create a task force. When the task force falters, we propose a commission. And when existing courts appear too slow, we contemplate another court.

Institutional multiplication can sometimes disguise institutional weakness.

A National Anti Corruption Court may accelerate trials. But it cannot investigate a case for the EFCC or ICPC. It cannot manufacture evidence that investigators failed to obtain. It cannot rescue a badly drafted charge. It cannot prevent witnesses from being compromised. It cannot replace diligent prosecution. And it cannot guarantee that politically powerful defendants will be treated exactly like ordinary citizens.

Those are the harder parts of the corruption problem.

A judge can decide only the case placed before the court. If investigators bring weak evidence and prosecutors present defective cases, giving the judge six weeks instead of six years will merely produce a faster failure.

That is why the conversation must extend beyond speed.

Nigeria needs competent investigation, professional prosecution and judicial efficiency operating together.

There is another question. What happens after judgment?

A specialised anti corruption court would still exist within Nigeria’s constitutional judicial architecture. Defendants must retain their rights to fair hearing and appeal. Any reform that pursues speed by sacrificing due process would simply exchange one problem for another.

Corruption trials should be swift. They must also be fair. The objective cannot be conviction at all costs. It must be credible justice delivered without unnecessary delay.

There is nevertheless something deeply troubling about a system in which corruption cases can remain unresolved for five or ten years. If the figure of 1,037 inherited cases reported by the CCT tells us anything, it is that the status quo cannot simply be defended.

No serious justice system should regard a decade as a reasonable period for determining whether a public officer violated the law.

But perhaps the more useful lesson is that deadlines should not begin and end with judges. Investigating agencies should have performance standards. Prosecutors should face consequences for habitual incompetence. Courts should control frivolous adjournments.

Defence lawyers should be entitled to deploy every legitimate protection available to their clients, but the administration of justice should not permit procedure to become an instrument for ensuring that substance is never reached.

And where corruption is established, sanctions must be sufficiently certain to deter the next offender.

That last point may be more important than the name on the courthouse.

People are not principally deterred by the number of anti corruption agencies or courts a country possesses. They are deterred by the probability that wrongdoing will be discovered, prosecuted and punished.

Certainty matters.

If a public officer believes there is a substantial chance that stolen money can purchase influence, frustrate investigation, finance endless litigation or eventually disappear into a negotiated political settlement, another court building will not frighten him.

But if he knows that suspicious transactions will be detected, investigators will follow the money, prosecutors will present competent evidence, trials will proceed without needless delay and punishment will follow conviction, behaviour begins to change.

That is deterrence.

There is therefore a case for considering the CCT proposal seriously. Specialisation can improve expertise. Dedicated judges can reduce competing caseloads. Strict case management can prevent unnecessary delay.

But Nigeria should resist the temptation to believe that institutional redesign is itself reform.

The National Assembly must interrogate the proposal carefully. What jurisdiction will the new court possess? How will it relate to existing Federal and State High Courts? What constitutional amendments may be required? How will its judges be appointed? What safeguards will protect their independence? How will appeals work? And, crucially, what prevents the same culture of delay migrating into the new institution?

These questions are not arguments against reform. They are the conditions for making reform meaningful.

Nigeria’s anti corruption struggle has produced enough agencies, slogans, arrests, arraignments and televised declarations of war against corruption.

What it desperately needs is consequence.

If a National Anti Corruption Court can help deliver competent, independent and timely justice, then it deserves serious consideration.

But if we simply change the signboard, appoint 37 judges, create seven divisions and reproduce the weaknesses already haunting our justice system, corruption will adapt quickly. It always has.

The real measure of this proposal will therefore not be how quickly Nigeria creates another court. It will be whether those who steal from Nigeria finally begin to believe that the law will catch them.

Until then, we may have another court. But will corruption be afraid?

Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC

Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645