The Bank Verification Number Exercise has exposed no fewer than 23,306 ghost workers within the Federal Government’s payroll. The Federal Ministry of Finance made the discovery with the adoption of the BVN for salary payment recently.
Details of about 312,000 civil servants have so far been checked & 23, 306 of them had irregularities with their data within the ministry and the one in the bank.
According to The Nation, the Federal government has started deleting the indicted civil servants from its payroll. Some of those affected have tendered their resignation letters to pre-empt dismissal from service and prosecution. A source from the Ministry who spoke on the development said
“Out of the accounts of about 312,000 civil servants processed so far, the ministry was said to have uncovered irregularities in the account of about 23,306 of them, who were suspected to have been collecting double salary. These indicted individuals are in two categories. In the first group, we found out that the names of some civil servants, whose salaries are being processed, are different from the names on the accounts where their salaries are paid. What this means is either those in this category are drawing salary from two sources (which could be different agencies), or they are ghost workers,”.The source added that the probe also showed that salaries were being paid to some inactive accounts, thus raising the suspicion that government was merely making payment to ghost workers. To this end, the Federal Government has placed some banks under watch for their roles in salary scam.