Ghost workers: FG goes after banks to recover fund

The Federal Government said it would approach
banks to recover all monies paid to the 23,000 ghost workers registered on the Integrated
Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, made this known while briefing the Senate Committee on
Finance during the ministry’s 2016 budget defence at the Senate in Abuja.
Adeosun said that investigation was ongoing on the issue and payment of the 23,000 suspected
workers would be suspended for one month to allow investigations to be completed.
She said that any bank found to be in complicity in the matter would be made to refund all the money
paid through them so far.
The minister disclosed that the discovery of the ghost workers was due to the registration of over
320,000 personnel on the IPPIS platform using their BVN numbers.
“What the IPPIS-BVN registration has shown us has been a revelation; we have identified that there are people who appear on our payroll
multiple times.
“BVN links all the accounts of that person, so we are seeing in our payroll, 20 names to one BVN
number.
“We have had a meeting on how we are going to clean them off; the process will be that we will
suspend that person from the payroll pending the
investigation.
“We will try as much as possible to conclude that investigation within 30 days so that we do not
suffer innocent people, but we really need to clean our payroll.
“We have about 23,000 that we need to investigate; those who either the BVN is linked to
multiple payments or the name on the BVN account is not consistent with the name on our
own payroll.
“Not only will we remove those people from our
payroll, but we will also be going after the banks involved to collect our money,” she said.
“Some of the information that we are getting is how long has this person been on the payroll, how
much has he been getting?
“In some cases, the accounts are held by the same bank and in some others all were opened on
the same day.
“If we are able to prove that banks have colluded with people to pad our payroll, we are not only
going to stop those payments, but we are also going to recover our money,” she added.
The minister said that ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) found guilty would also not be
ignored, but would be handed over to relevant agencies of government for further investigation and prosecution.

She said that the work of the ministry was to uncover the fraud and recover its money, but that
the work of criminal prosecution of individuals or banks involved would be done by relevant bodies.
“We are very confident with our programme that we will now be able to get every federally paid civil
servant onto IPPIS by June; we are aggressively chasing after June,” she said.
On the alleged N25 billion TSA fraud, Adeosun clarified that only about N8 billion was actually deducted from the account by the service provider.
She further argued that the company had no business deducting money from the account of
MDAs, but should have been paid a reasonable amount by a central agency of government.
According to her, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) should be
responsible for this purpose, pointing out that the
entire process should also be monitored by government.
“The N25 billion that was allegedly paid out was actually incorrect; it was about N8 billion that was
paid and it has been refunded because there was no basis for the deduction.
“I think that it should be within the Federal Government; it should be paid by the OAGF
because we are the beneficiaries.
“For consistency and monitoring, it makes sense to centralise those charges: TSA also needs to be
monitored, it is a system that is sweeping money
and before we pay them, we must verify the volume.
“It is the AGF that should bear the cost on behalf
of the MDAs because it is a national initiative,” she insisted.
Adeosun explained that the budget for payment of the consultant would be drawn from the Service Wide Votes.
The Senate Committee urged the Ministry of Finance, to go beyond recovering monies paid to
the 23,000 ghost workers, to prosecuting the culprits.
The chairman of the committee, Senator John Enoh, commended the ministry for unravelling the
ghost workers and charged it to ensure full investigation and to sanction persons and agencies indicted.