BVN Exposed 23,000 Ghost Workers – FG

The Senate, yesterday gave its backing to a move by the Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to immediately commence the sanctioning and prosecution of all firms, banks and individuals linked with the fraudulent planting of 23,000 ghost workers on the Federal Government’s payroll.

The resolve followed Adeosun’s disclosure that the introduction of Biometric Verification Number (BVN) for biometric capturing data of federal civil servants, exposed the shady deals.

Adeosun, had told Senate Committee on Finance at a budget defence session at the National Assembly that the affected ghost workers would be handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

She lamented that the ghost worker syndrome had caused very serious leakage to the country’s revenue system, stressing that those banks which allegedly connived with the workers to pad the Federal government’s payroll would also be prosecuted.

She said: “What the IPPIS-BVN registration has shown us has been a real 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.

“As we speak now, 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.

“If we are able to get everybody onto the BVN platform, we will be able to save a considerable amount of personnel cost. Not only will we remove those people from our payroll, but we will also be going after the banks involved to collect our money.

“So some of the information that we are getting is how long has this person been on the pay roll, how much has he been getting? In some cases, the accounts are held by the same bank and in somecases 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 try and recover our money”.

Asked what will happen to defaulting Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), the minister said: “My job is to get them off our payroll, what happens from there on goes to the investigativeagencies; we will pass our files onto them and they will take a decision as to what sanctions they will take.

“Mine is that I do not want to pay them anymore and whatever they have taken must come back, so we are going to hand our files onto EFCC and the relevant agencies.”