- Osun Has 8,452 Ghost Workers – Consultant
- You Lied, We Only Have 1,316 Ghost Workers, Retirees – Govt
A forensic audit firm, SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited, has accused the Osun State Government of inserting a total of 8,452 alleged ghost workers into the state’s payroll and paying them a sum of N13,716,914,129.28 annually.
However, the state government debunked the allegations, describing it as a subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the state.
The Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, who spoke through the company’s legal counsel, Jiti Ogunye, made the allegations at a press conference held at the Nigeria Union of Journalists Secretariat in Lagos on Friday.
Bakrin-Ottun said the figures emerged from a comprehensive forensic audit and payroll validation exercise conducted for the Osun State Government, which, according to her, revealed pervasive payroll fraud within the state’s civil and public service system.
Explaining how the figures were arrived at, Bakrin-Ottun said her firm was formally engaged by the Osun State Government following a proposal dated January 11, 2023, and was subsequently awarded the contract through a letter dated April 11, 2023, to audit and validate the state’s payroll.
According to her, a formal auditing and consulting agreement was executed on May 22, 2023, mandating the firm to carry out a holistic staff verification, payroll re-engineering and validation exercise covering the civil service, local governments, the State Universal Basic Education Board, the Teaching Service Commission, state-owned tertiary institutions, as well as all state and local government pensioners.
She described the exercise as one of the most extensive payroll audits ever undertaken in Osun State, aimed at verifying all individuals drawing salaries and pensions from the state treasury.
Bakrin-Ottun said the firm conducted the exercise between June and December 2023, deploying 125 personnel both on-site and remotely, and expending over N600m to execute the contract.
“The execution of the contract was very challenging, life-threatening and laden with security threats and bureaucratic subversions, understandably because the audit unearthed pervasive payroll fraud and corrupt practices in the state’s salary payment system,” she said.
Presenting the findings, she disclosed that as of January 2023, the Osun State payroll stood at N4,483,943,105.70 monthly for 37,456 staff and 17,918 pensioners.
However, after the audit, the verified payroll was reduced to N3,340,866,928.26 monthly, covering 29,004 genuine staff and the same 17,918 pensioners.
She stated that the reduction indicated that 8,452 ghost workers had been fraudulently inserted into the payroll, resulting in a monthly loss of N1,143,076,177.44 and an annual loss of N13,716,914,129.28 to the state.
But responding to the allegations, the state government through the Commissioner of Information, Kolapo Alimi in a statement on Friday, said the unusual high numbers of alleged ghost workers by the consultant led to a re-verification exercise which shockingly revealed extensive inflation of the supposed number of ghost workers and which showed that those the company claimed were ghost workers showed up that they were legitimate employees of the state government.
The government noted that the entire saga became more suspicious, especially as company’s fees was based on the amount of money she saves the State government on the payroll, indicating that the company’s claim was based on greed especially going by the consultant’s high handedness, open exclusion of staff during auditing process and deliberate maltreatment of workers that characterised the entire audit processes.
The state Government further submitted that while it was eager to clean up the state payroll, it can not, in good conscience, remove legitimate state government employees from the payroll and cannot submit to an audit report that has the potential to further defraud the state government.
Submitting that it is within its right to review an audit report before implementation, the government noted that the existence of open gaps, verifiable lapses, several battles during the audit process and a high number of ghost workers compelled the setting up of a verification committee as a prelude to the implementation of the staff audit report.
“Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd had declared 8,448 workers as unseen workers while 6,713 retirees were declared as ghost retirees. But the conclusion was arrived at by the company without making any efforts to call each of these workers to ascertain the reason for their absence.
“Upon the receipt of the report of the exercise carried out by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd, in order to avoid a situation where an honest worker would be declared a ghost worker only by reason of such worker’s absence from verification, especially if the reason for such absence is ill-health the Osun state Government carried out an in-depth analysis of the report and the following was discovered:
“Out of the total number of 8,448 workers declared by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State Government was able to confirm 8,015 as active workers while 433 workers were found to be unreachable.
“Also, out of the total number of 6,713 retirees declared as ghost workers by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State Government was able to confirm the existence of 5,830 retirees while 883 could not be reached.
“The implication of this is that the percentage claim payable to Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd reduced drastically by virtue of the fact that the said Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd attempted to reap where she did not sow by inflating the number of ghost workers/retirees to 15,161 when in actual fact, the unseen workers/retirees are about 1,316,” the statement noted.
Olamilekan Adigun is a graduate of Mass Communication with years of experience in journalism embedded in uncovering human interest stories. He also prioritises accuracy and factual reportage of issues.
