The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, has confirmed that nearly 23,000 ghost workers have been uncovered by a panel probing multiple salary payments in the federal civil service.
Speaking at a budget defense session in the Senate, the Finance Minister said that those people involved in the fraud would soon be handed over to Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
She explained that the panel was able to uncover the ghost workers because of the introduction of the bank verification number (BVN).
She further said a meeting will be held on Monday with the unions to agree on the best approach to clean them off from the system.
According to her, “The process will be that we will suspend that person from the payroll pending the investigation (and) we will try as far as possible to complete the investigation in 30 days so that we don’t catch out innocent people.
“We really need to clean our payroll off (because) as we speak now, we have about 23,000 that we need to investigate.
“Banks have colluded with people to pack our payroll and not only are we going to stop those payments but we are actually going to go and recover our money. ”she said.
