Daud Olatunji
President Bola Tinubu has ordered a comprehensive forensic audit of the Federal Government’s personnel, payroll and administrative systems following the discovery of ghost workers, fictitious agencies and other control failures across the public service.
The President also directed the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, to oversee the exercise, which will scrutinise the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System and other government platforms linked to personnel and financial management.
The directive was disclosed in a statement issued on Friday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.
The development followed a resolution of the Federal Executive Council on August 19, 2026, after findings by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission raised concerns over “fake agencies”, ghost workers and weaknesses in government control systems.
According to the statement, the audit is designed to determine the nature and extent of the weaknesses and establish how they have been exploited to gain access to public resources.
The exercise will have two major components.
The first will focus on IPPIS and other personnel, payroll, pension and financial-management platforms.
The audit team will examine reported cases of ghost workers and payroll fraud, reconcile the figures identified by the ICPC and trace how fictitious or ineligible persons were enrolled on government payrolls.
It will also scrutinise access, identity, biometric and bank-account controls to determine how fraudulent entries were created and sustained.
The review will further examine the links between IPPIS and other government platforms, including the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System, Remita, the Treasury Single Account and Sub-Treasury Account.
The government said the audit would determine whether identified fraud resulted from system defects, process failures, inadequate segregation of duties or deliberate circumvention of established controls.
The second component will cover all Federal Government ministries, departments, agencies, commissions, councils, parastatals and other government bodies.
The audit team is expected to establish a definitive inventory of federal government entities and verify their legal basis.
It will also investigate how organisations obtain official recognition, budgetary consideration, correspondence privileges, office facilities and access to government systems.
Beyond the existence of the agencies, the exercise will examine governance, procurement, internal audit and oversight mechanisms across the Federal Government.
The objective, according to the Presidency, is to identify and close systemic loopholes that could allow irregular entities or individuals to gain access to public funds and other government resources.
Tinubu directed that the exercise be conducted with the “highest standards of independence, professionalism and forensic integrity.”
The audit team will have access to relevant government systems and records and is expected to work with the ICPC so that the exercise complements ongoing investigations, prosecutions and recovery efforts.
The Presidency said the exercise would go beyond identifying individual cases of fraud or administrative failures.
It said the ultimate objective was to strengthen the architecture of government, improve data verification and reconciliation, reinforce accountability and ensure that only legally constituted government entities and eligible personnel could access public resources.
The Presidency described the exercise as part of Tinubu’s commitment to strengthening transparency, accountability, fiscal governance and institutional integrity across the Federal Government.
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