FBI and EFCC Join Forces to Probe USAID Fund Diversion in Nigeria
NIGERIA · GOVERNANCE & SECURITY
Key Facts
- —The meeting An FBI delegation visited the EFCC’s Lagos Zonal Directorate 2 on 10 September 2026 to deepen a joint investigation into allegedly diverted US aid funds.
- —The money The probe targets funds from US-supported HIV and tuberculosis programmes, including money left with implementing organisations after programmes were shut down in 2025.
- —The red flags US reviews uncovered inflated budgets and other irregularities in Kano State and several other states, a State Department inspector-general official said.
- —The unknowns No dollar figure for the allegedly diverted funds, no named suspects and no charges have been made public so far.
- —The backdrop Nigeria’s House of Representatives is already probing US$4.6 billion in Global Fund and USAID health grants covering 2021 to 2025.
When Washington shut down parts of its aid machine in 2025, money stayed behind with the organisations that ran its programmes. Now the FBI wants to know where it went — and it is asking Nigeria’s anti-graft agency to help find out.
The FBI and Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have reaffirmed their commitment to a joint investigation of alleged USAID fund diversion, agreeing to deepen intelligence sharing and operational cooperation in tracing money from discontinued American aid programmes.
The understanding was reached on Thursday, 10 September, when a delegation led by Macus Maccain, the FBI’s assistant law enforcement attaché, visited the office of Bawa Usman Kaltungo, acting zonal director of the EFCC’s Lagos Zonal Directorate 2, TheNigeriaLawyer reported.
What the Probe Targets
Maccain said the engagement became necessary after the US government shut down some USAID programmes in 2025, which raised concerns about funds that remained with implementing organisations. Some of those organisations are suspected of mismanaging or diverting money provided before the shutdowns. “We are seeking stronger engagement with the EFCC to establish how the funds were managed and identify possible financial misconduct arising from the termination of the programmes,” he said.
The focus is on programmes fighting HIV and tuberculosis. Jeremy Kennon, a special agent with the State Department’s Office of Inspector General who joined the delegation, said the US and Nigerian governments had funded organisations running those interventions — some of which established one-stop centres for HIV treatment. Subsequent reviews, he said, uncovered concerns over inflated budgets and other financial irregularities in Kano State and several other states — and he stressed the problem was not limited to Nigeria.
Kennon signalled a long-term arrangement: “We’ll like to work with the EFCC on this on a long-term basis, and we’ll be sharing information with you; not just getting information from you.” Kaltungo, responding on behalf of EFCC chairman Ola Olukoyede, pledged the commission would trace the funds nationwide to their ultimate beneficiaries.
No Figures, No Names — Yet
For now, the probe is a commitment without public numbers. Neither agency has put a dollar figure on the allegedly diverted funds, named suspects or announced charges. The first milestones to watch are asset freezes or the public naming of implementing organisations under scrutiny. Nigerian courts will also matter: any prosecution of foreign-funded NGOs would test evidence standards that past high-profile graft cases have sometimes struggled to meet.
A Politically Charged Trail
The investigation lands in a climate of suspicion that has been building on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 2025, a US congressman publicly alleged that USAID money had reached extremist groups including Boko Haram — a claim never substantiated with evidence, but one that triggered a Nigerian parliamentary response. Reuters reported in March 2025 that Nigerian lawmakers opened a probe into more than a dozen NGOs, including USAID-supported groups, demanding financial records going back to 2015.
By October 2025 the scrutiny had scaled up: the House of Representatives launched an investigation into US$4.6 billion in Global Fund and USAID grants for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and polio covering 2021 to 2025, as Reuters documented. The FBI-EFCC channel now adds a criminal-investigation track to that parliamentary one.
A Channel Built Over Years
The Lagos meeting extends a relationship both agencies have invested in. In June 2024, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray travelled to Abuja, met President Bola Tinubu and EFCC chairman Olukoyede, and announced expanded cooperation on cybercrime and shared threats. Moving that partnership into foreign-aid accountability is a significant — and sensitive — step, touching both Nigeria’s sovereignty over its NGO sector and Washington’s credibility on how its aid money is spent.
For the EFCC, a credible joint probe is a chance to show it can work complex cross-border financial cases with a top-tier partner. For the FBI and the State Department’s inspector general, it is a test of whether post-USAID accountability can be enforced through local institutions rather than imposed from outside.
What to Watch
No timeline for findings has been announced. The practical markers will be the first traced transactions, the first frozen accounts and the first named organisations. Until then, the investigation is best read as an institutional signal: aid money that once flowed with little cross-border audit is now being followed, and the contest for influence in Africa chronicled in our Africa: The New Scramble series increasingly runs through auditors as much as ambassadors.
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