Former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has revealed that the integration of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system into the federal payroll helped uncover approximately 45,000 ghost workers, exposing massive payroll fraud that had drained public resources for years.
Speaking at a recent policy dialogue in Lagos, Adeosun explained that previous attempts to verify staff through new biometric captures faced resistance, particularly from paramilitary agencies.
Her team therefore leveraged the existing BVN database to cross-check federal payroll records.
“The payroll was our biggest cost,” Adeosun stated. “We ran the federal payroll against the BVN database, and the result was staggering: we found 45,000 ‘ghost workers.’”
She clarified that many of these were not traditional “ghosts” created by syndicates, but cases of irregularities such as one individual’s BVN linked to multiple salaries (sometimes up to seven), payments to deceased or transferred workers, and inconsistencies between names on payroll and bank accounts.
The revelation highlights the scale of payroll fraud in the Nigerian public service and the effectiveness of technology-driven reforms like BVN and the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in curbing waste and improving transparency in government spending.
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