FG Set To Probe11,000 Ghost Workers on Payroll

The Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun, on Wednesday, March 9, said Federal Government is probing an additional 11,000 workers to determine if they are ghost workers.

About 23,000 such workers were uncovered recently, saving the government N2.29 billion monthly.

The Minister, while briefing State House correspondents, said the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved continuous audit process, particularly on the payroll.

According to her, the audit would be extended to other areas of government’s expenditure to block fraud.

She said: “The approval of a presidential initiative on continuous audit. In the budget speech, the President said we would introduce a continuous audit process, particularly of the payroll and that work has resulted in the elimination of about 23,000 fraudulent recipients of federal salary and more work is still on.

“We felt that the continuous audit should not be limited to payroll, there is actually need to strengthen internal audit across government and to that extent, the World Bank in 2010 started an initiative to try and introduce real-space internal audit in Nigeria, but it wasn’t successful.”

Stressing that the World Bank indicated its readiness to support Nigeria in the initiative, she added that it would take six months to get the required legislation through.

She said: “So, in the interim, we have agreed to do the presidential initiative on continuous audit, which will give backing to the work we are doing and will allow us to extend this work beyond payroll to other areas of expenditure.”