Scandal: How Kenya Lost Sh912 Million in 2025 Through Fake Student Data in NEMIS

Kenyan taxpayers have been fleeced of a staggering Sh912 million in just three months through a sophisticated fraud scheme involving ghost learners registered in the National Education Management Information System, a damning government report has revealed.

The shocking revelations expose a deep-rooted conspiracy between rogue school heads and Education Ministry officials who manipulated student enrollment data to siphon millions meant for genuine learners, raising serious questions about how long the taxpayer has been bankrolled phantom students.

Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba yesterday dropped the bombshell while releasing the School Data Verification Report at Jogoo House, painting a grim picture of systemic corruption that has bled the education sector dry.

The fraud, which came to light after a nationwide verification exercise launched in September 2025, uncovered massive discrepancies between official NEMIS records and actual student numbers on the ground. The exercise was triggered after the Auditor-General raised red flags over suspicious enrollment patterns.

Primary schools emerged as the biggest culprits, with NEMIS showing 5,833,175 learners against a verified count of just 4,947,271. This means 885,904 ghost learners were eating into public coffers, receiving capitation grants for students who simply do not exist.

Secondary schools were not far behind, with 87,730 phantom learners registered in the system. The fraudsters knew exactly what they were doing, strategically inflating numbers to maximize their illegal gains from government coffers.

In a twisted irony, junior schools under-reported their enrollment by 543,250 learners, suggesting a possible scheme to divert funds meant for younger students to line the pockets of corrupt officials.

Ogamba confirmed that 20 school heads have been forwarded to the Teachers Service Commission for immediate administrative action, though he remained tight-lipped about their identities. The CS hinted that the figure could rise as investigations deepen.

“The schools with the highest variance ranging between 500 to 2,300 are the ones we are taking action on immediately. This is just the beginning,” Ogamba warned, his tone suggesting a long battle ahead.

The scam exploited the government’s capitation funding model, which allocates resources strictly based on NEMIS enrollment data. With funding disbursed in three tranches of 50 percent, 30 percent and 20 percent across the school terms, fraudsters had three opportunities each year to milk the system.

The verification exercise unearthed a catalogue of irregularities that point to criminal negligence and deliberate fraud. Missing or invalid Unique Personal Identifiers, duplicated assessment numbers and mismatched examination codes littered the database like breadcrumbs of corruption.

Fourteen institutions brazenly refused to submit any data at all, raising suspicions about what they were hiding. Their heads now face the wrath of TSC as authorities tighten the noose.

Perhaps most shocking was the discovery that 27 schools, 10 secondary and 17 primary, were completely non-operational due to insecurity, low enrollment or administrative closure. Yet these ghost institutions continued appearing in NEMIS, presumably drawing funds for students who never set foot in their abandoned classrooms.

The rot extended beyond school gates to sub-county education offices, where supervisors turned a blind eye to glaring discrepancies. Twenty-eight sub-county directors of education and quality assurance officers now face administrative guillotine for either complicity or gross incompetence.

Ogamba has ordered the immediate suspension of all unverified learners from resource allocation, effectively cutting off the money tap for fraudsters. Funding will only resume after thorough verification, a measure that should have been standard practice from the start.

The CS announced that data verification will now be conducted every term, a tacit admission that the system has been compromised for far too long. He also revealed that the report has been forwarded to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, signaling that criminal prosecutions may follow.

What remains unanswered is the elephant in the room: how long has this grand theft been going on? Ogamba admitted his ministry only recently took charge and claimed they were the first to verify learner data. If true, this suggests previous administrations either ignored the problem or were complicit in the looting.

Conservative estimates suggest that if the Sh912 million loss occurred in just the third term, which receives only 20 percent of annual capitation, the total annual loss could exceed Sh5 billion. Multiply that by several years, and Kenyan taxpayers may have been robbed of tens of billions.

The NEMIS scandal has ripped open the festering wound of corruption in Kenya’s education sector, exposing how easily public funds can be diverted when oversight is weak and accountability non-existent. As parents struggle to keep their children in school and teachers work in deplorable conditions, faceless bureaucrats and crooked school administrators have been throwing lavish parties with money meant for desks, textbooks and chalk.

The question now is whether the government has the political will to prosecute the culprits and recover stolen funds, or whether this will be yet another report gathering dust on a shelf while the looting continues.

For now, 20 school heads and 28 education officers are sweating as investigations close in. But Kenyans want more than administrative action. They want arrests, prosecutions and lengthy jail terms for everyone who participated in robbing children of their future.

The NEMIS heist is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet. It represents stolen opportunities, crumbling classrooms that could have been renovated, textbooks that were never bought and teachers who went unpaid. It is about a system so broken that stealing from children has become standard operating procedure.

As the investigation unfolds, one thing is clear: the Sh912 million discovered so far may just be the tip of a very large, very corrupt iceberg.