Nigeria’s Ghost Contractors: How Public Money Disappeared Over Five Years

Somewhere in Abuja, there is a company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, listed in a government procurement database, awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of naira, and paid from the federal treasury. 

There is no office you can visit. There are no staff you can speak to. There is no equipment it has ever owned. In some cases, there is not even a valid CAC registration number. The company exists only on paper, and on paper, it has already been paid.

This is not a rare occurrence in Nigeria’s public procurement system. It is a pattern, documented across five years, spanning federal agencies, state governments, internationally funded projects, and some of the most sensitive public investments the country has made. 

Between 2021 and 2026, Nigerian investigative reporters, legislative committees, auditors, and international organisations have produced a growing body of evidence showing how phantom companies collect real public money, how the system designed to stop them is structured in ways that enable them instead, and what the cost of that failure looks like on the ground

How the system enable a ghost contractor

A ghost contractor is a company that wins a government contract despite having no genuine operational capacity to deliver it. 

The spectrum runs from companies that are entirely fabricated, with no CAC registration and no legal existence, to companies that exist on paper but have no staff, no equipment, and no relevant experience. 

Some are registered for one line of business, such as general trading, and awarded contracts in completely unrelated sectors, such as environmental remediation or security technology.

Prequalification processes, competitive bidding requirements, and Bureau of Public Procurement oversight were all built into the framework for exactly this reason.

The Ogoni Cleanup and the Contractors That Did Not Exist

The most thoroughly documented ghost contractor scandal of the past five years involves the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, known as HYPREP, the government agency responsible for cleaning up Ogoniland in Rivers State following decades of oil pollution by Shell, Total, Agip, and the NNPC. The cleanup, described by the United Nations Environment Programme as an environmental emergency, attracted over $572 million in contributions from the SPDC Joint Venture between 2018 and 2022, with a total project cost estimated at $1 billion.

Investigative reporting by Dataphyte, later cited by Economy Post and confirmed through CAC database checks, found that HYPREP awarded remediation contracts to companies that did not legally exist. Kanny Kay Limited, awarded Lot 042 at Well 04, Korokoro in Tai Local Government Area, was not found in the CAC register. 

Avandale Supplies and Services Limited, awarded Lot 007 at Nkeleoken, Alode Eleme, similarly had no CAC registration. Tip Tree Nigeria Limited, awarded Lot 017 in Tai Local Government Area, also did not appear in any official corporate records.

The Ogoni communities, meanwhile, still lack potable water. Children are being treated for waterborne diseases at underfunded hospitals. The land, by the testimony of geological scientists, remains unfit for agriculture. The money was collected. The work was not done.

 Benue State and N11.9 Billion in Contracts That Left No Physical Trace

In Benue State, procurement documents obtained by Secret Reporters and published in 2026 revealed a series of contract awards between August and December 2023 running to N11.9 billion, characterised by missing approvals, ghost deliveries, and figures that investigators described as defying logic.

At the center of the documentation was a N7.18 billion vehicle procurement contract awarded on August 25, 2023, to MBS Investment and Property Limited, an Abuja-based company. In a separate transaction on the same date, Lajec Engineering Services Limited was awarded a N245 million contract for the procurement of explosive detectors and multi-frequency band jammers for VIP convoy protection. 

The contract was executed without advertisement, competitive bidding, or executive council approval. No verifiable evidence existed that the equipment was ever delivered, tested, or deployed. Security experts noted that equipment of this nature ordinarily requires open competitive procurement, independent technical evaluation, and certification before deployment, none of which appeared to have occurred.

The same company, Lajec Engineering Services Limited, was awarded a further N4.48 billion contract on December 8, 2023, for the procurement of Hummer buses and Toyota Hilux vehicles. The same pattern held: no transparent procurement process, no delivery confirmation, no public accountability.

Kano Schools, Phantom Completion, and Students in Ruins

In Kano State, reporting by Economic Confidential in 2023 documented a pattern of school renovation and construction contracts that were officially marked as 100 percent complete on the state’s public procurement website, while physical visits to the schools revealed abandoned structures, broken windows, and students learning in dangerous conditions.

In Government Secondary School Dambatta, a N32 million contract awarded to Madatai Enterprises in 2022 for renovation and furniture supply showed no physical evidence of execution. The school served more than 3,000 students. The Kano State government’s own procurement portal listed the project as completed. No one had done the work.

When a Freedom of Information request was submitted to the relevant state ministries seeking an explanation, the ministry responded that the FOIA 2011 was a federal law not domesticated in Kano and therefore not applicable. The public’s right to know what happened to public money spent on their children’s schools was denied on a technicality.

What accountability actually requires

Dr. Olanrewaju Ajagbe, a public finance analyst who has written extensively on Nigeria’s budget execution challenges, has argued that the ghost contractor problem cannot be solved by adding more rules to a system that already has adequate rules and chooses not to enforce them.

 “The Public Procurement Act of 2007 is not a weak law. Section 58 prescribes criminal sanctions including imprisonment for procurement fraud. The problem is that no one applies it. The Bureau of Public Procurement has never prosecuted a single contractor under that provision. You cannot deter behaviour you have decided not to punish.”

Investigative reporter and public accountability advocate Fisayo Soyombo, founder of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, has made a related point about the role of physical verification. 

“Every major ghost contractor case that has been exposed in Nigeria in the past five years was exposed by reporters who physically went to the project sites. That is not a journalism problem. That is a supervision problem. If a government agency cannot send one person to verify that a project it paid N7 billion for actually exists, the question is whether it wanted to know.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a ghost contractor in Nigeria?

A ghost contractor in Nigeria is a company that wins a government contract despite having no genuine capacity to deliver the work. This includes companies with no CAC registration, companies registered for unrelated business activities, companies with no verifiable staff or equipment, and companies whose listed project sites or deliverables do not physically exist. Ghost contractors collect public money for work that is either not done or done to a standard far below what was contracted.

How much money does Nigeria lose to ghost contractors annually?

The Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa, cited in BusinessDay in March 2024, estimated that Nigeria loses $18 billion annually to financial crimes and corrupt procurement processes. 

The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Management of Nigeria puts procurement manipulation at approximately 30 percent of national resources. The Office of the Auditor-General documented $116 million in incomplete or unexecuted contracts from 2021 alone.

Has anyone been prosecuted for ghost contractor fraud in Nigeria?

Despite extensive documentation of ghost contractor fraud across multiple agencies and states, criminal prosecution specifically under the Public Procurement Act’s Section 58 provisions has not been recorded. 

The ICPC has investigated and flagged procurement fraud in multiple budget cycles, and the EFCC has prosecuted some corruption cases with procurement elements, but systematic prosecution of contractors and procurement officials for ghost contract fraud remains absent from Nigeria’s accountability record.