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Identifies Over 8,000 Ghost Workers Receiving over N13.7bn Annually
- Safiu Kehinde
A Lagos-based auditing firm, Sally Tabbot Consulting, has called out the Osun State Government over its alleged failure to implement its reports on the payroll fraud discovered within the government’s workforce.
This is coming under the heels of the state government’s accusation against the audit firm.
According to reports , the Osun state government had accused the firm of inflating the number of workforce presented to it by additional 15,161 workers.
Reacting to the allegation on Channels TV’s Politics Today programme on Thursday evening, Sally Tabbot’s CEO, Saadat Ottun, recalled how the Govenror Ademola Adeleke-led administration had contacted her firm to audit the payroll system following in the wake of the addition of 12,000 workers by the administration of former governor, Gboyega Oyetola.
Saadat disclosed that the transition committee established before Adeleke’s inauguration as governor in 2022 had set up sub- committees to look into the payroll amid suspicion of ghost workers withing the government.
Adeleke would then engage the firm who were given details of the committee’s findings before taking over the case.
“The Oyetola administration added over 12,000 people when drawing towards the time of handover.
“The reason for this, I don’t know becuase for a government that struggled all the four years to pay salaries and staff emolument, that was a red flag.
“Over 12,000 were hurriedly added into the payroll.
“And then the incoming government of Adeleke decided that first, they issued an Executive Order. There were six executive orders.
“Executive order 3 and 4 nullified and reversed all these appointments and that all their salaries should stop.
“And then they promulgated a committee. They actually started with the committee. Thay six committees and the third committee was the one for staff audit and staff matters.
“The report of the committee is here. The committee consisted of public servants, civil servants, people noteworthy, and inner caucus.
“This is what they came up with. And you will be surprised to know that most of their recommendations and their findins were things we have found ourselves.
“For instance, the committee had a disparity with the number of people. They said Minister of Human Resources, give the number of people you have. The Ministry gave them 38,268 people.
“And then the committee said they found about only 35,011 and they payroll company at that point said that there are 39,106.
“If we were to put it into a proper perspective, if there were 38,268 being counted by the Ministry of Human Resources, and their own committee said they only found a little over 35,000, we can simply say that their own committee already discovered more than 4,000 ghost workers.
“Suddenly, you contract us and us and you say you knew from the beginning that there was problem.
“The administration knew there was a problem and the committee, their own committee, recommendation to them was that there should be a full-blown holistic audit of all staff- the pensioners and state-owned higher institution of learning, which was we were contacted.” Saadat said.
She maintained that her audit firm was duly contacted with series of interviews and presentations before being considered as the best pick for the audit.
The Sally Tabbot boss however disclosed facing challenges with attempted sabotage of the auditing process by those she considered beneficiaries of the payroll fraud.
“We were not contacted off the shelf. We had presentations upon presentations through the transmission committee which was what was available as at that time.
“We had different types of interviews and presentations and at the end of the day, our company was selected by virtue of our past experienc, our trajectory of good service, and excellent performance.
“Of course you know an audit is basically a fact-finding mission- what is happening there. You hypotehsized that some monies are being lost. Let’s delve into it. Let’s find out exactly what is going on.
“My mandate was to do a physical verification of all staff of the state govenrment, local government, state-owned higher institutions of learning, and all their pensioners.
“My mandate did not include any political appointtee. Because at that time that I got my letter, there were no political appointeeat at the first instance.
“We started and you know as usual when you want to correct things, there will always be that iota of warring.
“So, it was war right from the very beginning. So many people who obviously for one reason or the other benefitting from it decided that this thing will not see the light of day.” Saadat said.
She admitted having the full support of Adeleke in the course of the audit as the governor reportedly stood his ground against those frustrating the effort toll the release of the report in 2024.
“The truth be told, the governor Ademola Adeleke stood his ground, wanted the audit completed and he ensured that we were able to do most of the things we wanted to do to the extent that he was available. We call him up at 2am, 3am. We used to call him then the governor that never slept.
“You can call him that Your Excellency we had issues and he will sort it out.
“We struggled, put in our best efforts and we were able to come up with the report that we have presented to the state government since July 2024.” She said.
While expressing her disappointmentthat , that the report has not been implemented up until now, Saadat highlighted some of the firm’s discoveries.
According to her, over 8,000 ghost workers were identified with about N13.7 billion paid to them as salaries annually.
She disclosed that the firm also discovered cases of one bank account linked to 962 ghost workers with another another account receiving 5,615 salaries every month.
Saadat also disclosed that 5,831 out of the over 17,000 pensioners presented were non-existential.
“The state submitted 37,456 workers. At the end of the day, they went on to submit few of them more, making 39,456.
“Of this 39,456 workers, 8,452 did not show up and the amount of money being used to pay those is N1.143 billion every month. And that amounts to over N13.7 billion a year.
“Also, the pensioners, when we asked how many they were, they said that there were over 17,000 pensioners. But when we did the full audit of all the pensio,ers- both home and abroad, we found out that of the figures submitted, 5,831 were non-existent.
“And we did this for 12 months. We found out that some people were being paid multiple times in a month.
“In a situation where you are getting paid electronically through the bank. But you have one single account taking 962 salaries per month. One single account-linked to only one BVN and one name and one bank account.
“In fact, there was a particular account that had 5,615 salaries going into it every month.” She said.