President Bola Tinubu has directed the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, to oversee a comprehensive forensic audit of Federal Government systems, including the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), as well as federal agencies and their internal controls.
The President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed this in a statement issued on Friday titled, ‘President Tinubu Approves Comprehensive Forensic Audit of IPPIS, Federal Agencies, Ministries’.
The directive followed a resolution by the Federal Executive Council on August 19, 2026, in response to findings by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) concerning fictitious agencies, ghost workers and other control failures within government institutions.
According to the Presidency, the audit will determine the nature and extent of weaknesses in government systems and establish how such loopholes may have been exploited.
The exercise will have two major components.
The first will focus on a forensic review of government systems, particularly IPPIS and related payroll, personnel, pension and financial management platforms.
The audit will investigate reported cases of ghost workers and payroll fraud, reconcile figures identified by the ICPC and trace how fictitious or ineligible individuals were enrolled on government payrolls.
It will also examine access controls, identity verification, biometric records and bank-account information to determine whether existing safeguards were compromised.
The review will further assess the links between IPPIS and other government platforms, including the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), Remita, the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and Sub-TSA.
The Presidency said the exercise would establish whether identified irregularities resulted from system defects, process failures, weak segregation of duties or deliberate circumvention of established procedures.
The second component will cover federal ministries, departments and agencies, commissions, councils, parastatals and other government bodies.
It will seek to establish a definitive inventory of such entities and verify their legal basis, while examining how they obtain official recognition, budgetary allocations, correspondence privileges, office facilities and access to government systems.
The audit will also assess governance, procurement, internal audit and oversight mechanisms across government, with the aim of closing systemic loopholes that could allow fictitious entities or ineligible individuals to gain access to public 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 will work with the ICPC to ensure that the exercise complements ongoing investigations, prosecutions and recovery efforts.
The President said the objective was not merely to identify individual cases of fraud or administrative failure but to strengthen the overall architecture of government.
He said the exercise should help close systemic loopholes, improve data verification and reconciliation, reinforce accountability and ensure that only legally constituted entities and eligible personnel have access to government resources.
The directive comes amid an expanding scandal triggered by the discovery of the fictitious Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council.
The entity’s self-styled Director-General, Adeniyi Adeyemi, is currently facing prosecution over allegations of forgery and impersonation.
The ICPC had, in an interim report submitted to the President on August 6, identified verification and coordination weaknesses across several government offices, including the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service, the Office of the Accountant-General, the Budget Office and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
On August 22, the anti-corruption agency announced the discovery of another fictitious entity, the National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office.
The organisation had reportedly been allocated space within the premises of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and was promoted by an individual identified as George Nwabueze, who allegedly operated under at least four aliases.
The latest directive signals a broader Federal Government effort to uncover irregularities within its administrative, payroll and institutional systems and strengthen safeguards against abuse of public resources.
