Massive fraud: FG makes unbelievable discovery

– 11,000 ghost workers were exposed in an audit exercise

– The federal government promises to reveal the names of those who have been receiving salaries without working

In what might be considered a massive uncovering of fraud, the federal government revealed that it will soon expose 11,000 ghost workers who have been on its payroll.

This is the second batch of staff audit as the first batch exposed 23,000 ghost workers in its payroll saving the nation N2.29bn per month.

The Punch reports that Mrs. Kemi Adeosun who is the minister of finance made this revelation on March 9 after the Federal Executive Council meeting headed by President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.

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She disclosed that her ministry was employing computer techniques to investigate the 11,000 affected cases and that Nigerians would be informed on the money saved from the exercise.

“On the issue of the ghost workers, of the 23,000 that we had removed, our payroll has reduced by N2.29bn per month.

“The update on that is that we are now investigating another potential 11,000.

“Again, we are using computer techniques to identify those who we need to investigate.

“So we are now looking at the second batch and as we resolve those cases, we will inform you of the amount saved and the number of people removed.”

She said the FEC had approved the presidential initiative on continuous audit of ministries, departments and agencies and that the World Bank had supported Nigeria on this initiative.

“The FEC deliberated extensively on the need for this and agreed that the control framework over finance and spending of government’s money needed to be strengthened especially in anticipation of the approval of the budget, which is an extended expenditure.

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“If we don’t strengthen our controls, then there is a risk that money would leak or be applied to the wrong things and therefore, the ability to go into various agencies without notice and check and do audits and updates to make sure that public money is being spent in accordance with our expectations and objectives.

“FEC approved the setting up of this initiative effectively using an executive order to create internal audit to enable us to continue this work and to extend it to everywhere that federal money is being spent or received so that we can have better oversight.”

A week ago, ghost workers on the government’s payroll were fired and their names deleted in a move by the Buhari-led government to rid the country of corruption.

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