“EFCC Recovered Nothing From Me,” Says Former NSIPA Boss
Nearly three years after her suspension threw a spotlight on alleged financial abuses inside Nigeria’s flagship welfare agency, the former Chief Executive Officer of the National Social Investment Programme Agency, Halima Shehu, has publicly rejected claims that she diverted ₦44 billion, insisting she was punished for raising the alarm rather than for any wrongdoing.
Shehu, who spoke during an interview on ARISE NEWS on Monday, said she alerted anti graft agencies to suspicious transactions inside the agency months before President Bola Tinubu removed her from office. “There were movements of funds that I didn’t give approval for, didn’t authorise and didn’t consent to,” she said, describing the transactions as actions taken outside her control.
By her account, she resumed duty on October 18, 2023, and soon uncovered what she called weak financial controls. “When I got to office, I discovered weak financial controls. Money was being touched without accountability. So I began to do my own audit,” she said. She stated that she submitted documentary evidence of the alleged infractions to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission on December 22, 2023, before her suspension in January 2024.
The former agency head was categorical in rejecting the headline figure attached to her name. “I never transferred ₦44 billion to any personal account. The EFCC never recovered a penny from my account, my family’s account, or any friend’s account,” she said, explaining that the transfers under review were payments to licensed service providers and financial institutions that disbursed money to beneficiaries. In August 2025, through her lawyers, she had similarly demanded a retraction over a newspaper report claiming she embezzled ₦44.8 billion and that the EFCC recovered ₦39.8 billion from her, describing it as false and defamatory.
Shehu further alleged that nearly ₦14 billion was withdrawn from the agency’s accounts during her roughly ten weeks in office without her approval, and that unauthorised signatories were added to its Remita account domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria. She said she raised these concerns with the then Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Betta Edu, and the ministry’s permanent secretary.
Her renewed intervention follows an open letter to the President and a tearful video circulated days earlier, in which she demanded that the EFCC make its findings public. “My integrity is my asset. I may have made administrative mistakes, but I am not corrupt and I did not take funds meant for poor and vulnerable Nigerians,” she said, arguing that the report would clear her name.
The allegations against Shehu form part of a wider storm that engulfed the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation from late 2023. Edu was suspended in January 2024 after a leaked memo showed she had directed the Accountant General of the Federation to pay ₦585.2 million meant for vulnerable groups into the private account of a civil servant, a payment she defended as procedurally sound. Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Umar Farouq, was separately questioned over an alleged ₦37.1 billion fraud during her tenure. All three officials had their travel documents seized and were released on bail.
The scandals prompted Tinubu to suspend the National Social Investment Programme in January 2024 for a comprehensive review. The scheme, launched in 2016, houses some of the country’s largest poverty intervention initiatives, including the Conditional Cash Transfer programme, the school feeding scheme, youth employment programmes and micro credit for petty traders.
The EFCC has consistently maintained that no suspect has been cleared. In an April 2024 statement, the commission said its investigations were “ongoing and advancing steadily” and warned the public to disregard claims to the contrary. As of the time of filing, the anti graft agency had not published any report on the ministry probes, and no charges tied to the specific sums cited had been reported in court.
Shehu, who says the prolonged silence has caused lasting reputational and financial harm, is now pinning her hopes on presidential intervention to force the report into the open.