Tinubu Orders Forensic Audit of Government Payroll Systems Amid Fake Agency Scandal

President Bola Tinubu has initiated a sweeping forensic audit of Nigeria's federal government systems, targeting the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and various agencies. This directive, issued to the Minister of Finance, follows a Federal Executive Council resolution prompted by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission's (ICPC) discoveries of "fake agencies," ghost workers, and significant control failures.

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The exercise will establish the nature and extent of weaknesses in government’s control system, and determine how such weaknesses have been exploited.

The audit will meticulously examine the IPPIS and related payroll, personnel, pension, and financial management platforms. It will investigate reported instances of ghost workers and payroll fraud, reconcile figures identified by the ICPC, and trace the enrollment of fictitious or ineligible individuals. A key focus will be reviewing access, identity, biometric, and bank account controls, as well as the interfaces between IPPIS and other government platforms like GIFMIS, Remita, and the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

Furthermore, the audit will encompass all federal government agencies, departments, commissions, councils, and parastatals. This will involve establishing a definitive inventory of these bodies, verifying their legal basis, and assessing how they obtain official recognition, budgetary consideration, and access to government systems. The review will also evaluate governance, procurement, internal audit, and oversight controls to identify and close systemic weaknesses that allow irregular entities or individuals to access public resources.

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The exercise will also examine the interfaces between IPPIS and other government platforms, including GIFMIS, Remita, the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and Sub-TSA, to determine whether fraud resulted from system defects, process failures, inadequate segregation of duties or deliberate circumvention.

President Tinubu emphasized the need for the exercise to be conducted with the highest standards of independence, professionalism, and forensic integrity. The audit team will collaborate with the ICPC to complement ongoing investigations and prosecutions. The ultimate goal, as stated by the President, is to go beyond identifying individual cases of fraud and strengthen the government's architecture, close loopholes, improve data verification, reinforce accountability, and ensure that only legitimate entities and personnel access public resources.

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President Tinubu expects the exercise to go beyond identifying individual cases of fraud or administrative failure by strengthening the architecture of Government, closing systemic loopholes, improving data verification and reconciliation, reinforcing accountability, and ensuring that only duly constituted entities and eligible personnel have access to Government resources.