The Osun State Government has been accused of deliberate payment of N13.7bn to 8,452 ghost workers annually.
A forensic audit firm, SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited, disclosed this at a press conference in Osogbo, the Osun State.
Speaking, the company’s legal counsel, Jiti Ogunye, said the firm had in 2023 awarded the contract to audit and validate the state’s payroll by the government.
Ogunye stated that the company went to work conducting comprehensive forensic audit and payroll 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.
The findings, according to the speaker were the discoveries 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 but 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.
He said 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.
The contention the legal practitioner who spoke on behalf of the company’s the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the firm, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun said, was that the state government neither implemented the recommendations of the company nor paid the agreed professional fees to it.
“Payment under the contract is not contingent on the implementation of the audit report. However, we insist that the recommendations must be implemented in the interest of transparency and accountability,” Ogunye declared.
