Secrets Reporters
Nigeria has not conducted a national census since 2006. For nearly two decades, the National Population Commission has cited funding gaps, logistics failures and political hesitation as the reasons the country still does not know, with any real precision, how many people live within its borders. So when throve of information available to us reveals that the very agency entrusted with this task oversaw contract irregularities worth ₦240 billion in a single financial year, the question writes itself: was the money ever missing, or was it simply somewhere other than where it was supposed to be?
At the centre of the scandal is a contract for Personal Digital Assistants which is the handheld devices field enumerators use to collect and transmit population data. Documents in SecretsReporters possession found that N131,559,517,295.72, which is over ₦131.5 billion was paid out for these devices with no evidence of delivery.
Paragraph 708 of Nigeria’s Financial Regulations 2009 could not be plainer: “On no account should payment be made for services not yet performed or for goods not yet supplied.” Paragraph 603(i) of the same regulations required every payment voucher to carry full particulars of dates, numbers, quantities, rates, supported by relevant documents. The documents our reporters reviewed found none of this for a payment north of ₦131 billion.
And then it gets worse. A separate finding uncovered a direct violation of the Bureau of Public Procurement’s own due process directive. In a report referenced BPP/RPT/22/Vol.1/281, dated 15th November 2022, the BPP explicitly directed the National Population Commission to exclude Messrs Zinox Technologies Limited and TD Africa from participating as local content suppliers in the PDA contracts, precisely because both companies were already engaged as representatives of the Original Equipment Manufacturer for the same procurement, a direct conflict that undermines the entire purpose of local content requirements. This directive was violated, with ₦96,800,000,000.00, nearly ₦97 billion tied to contracts executed in breach of the BPP’s explicit instruction.
Between just these two findings, the National Population Commission is staring down over ₦228 billion in contract irregularities on ICT procurement alone and a broader review of the same PDA and ICT contract cluster found still more: inflated contract pricing worth ₦1.45 billion, inconsistent contract documentation tied to a ₦4.43 billion subscription, an ICT contract awarded and executed without a Bill of Quantities worth ₦6.23 billion, and a further ₦4.73 billion the auditors recommend be recovered and remitted to the Treasury outright. Add every figure together, and the scale of irregularity inside this single agency, in a single audit cycle, approaches ₦240 billion.
This did not happen under an empty chair. Nasir Isa Kwarra served as Chairman of the National Population Commission during which these PDA contracts, this BPP violation, and this cluster of ICT irregularities were recorded. Kwarra has since been replaced: Dr. Aminu Yusuf was sworn in as the new NPC Chairman by President Bola Tinubu in December 2025, alongside new board members, and now sits atop an agency still carrying the unresolved weight of what we saw.
