A forensic audit firm, SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited and the Osun State Government have traded words over the number of ghost workers in the state.
The firm had accused the state government of inserting a total of 8,452 alleged ghost workers into the state’s payroll and paying them a sum of N13,716,914,129.28 annually.
However, the state government debunked the allegations, describing it as a subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the state.
The Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the f
SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, who spoke through the company’s legal counsel, Jiti Ogunye, on Friday, said the figures emerged from a comprehensive forensic audit and payroll validation exercise conducted for the Osun State Government, which, according to her, revealed pervasive payroll fraud within the state’s civil and public service system.
She said, “As of January 2023, the Osun State payroll stood at N4,483,943,105.70 monthly for 37,456 staff and 17,918 pensioners.
“However, 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.”
She stated that 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.
But responding, the state government in a statement by the Commissioner for Information, Kolapo Alimi, said the unusual high numbers of alleged ghost workers by the consultant led to a re-verification exercise which shockingly revealed extensive inflation of the supposed number of ghost workers and which showed that those the company claimed were ghost workers showed up that they were legitimate employees of the state government.
“Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd had declared 8,448 workers as unseen workers while 6,713 retirees were declared as ghost retirees. But the conclusion was arrived at by the company without making any efforts to call each of these workers to ascertain the reason for their absence.
“Upon the receipt of the report of the exercise carried out by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd, in order to avoid a situation where an honest worker would be declared a ghost worker only by reason of such worker’s absence from verification, especially if the reason for such absence is ill-health the Osun state Government carried out an in-depth analysis of the report and the following was discovered:
“Out of the total number of 8,448 workers declared by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State Government was able to confirm 8,015 as active workers while 433 workers were found to be unreachable.
“Also, out of the total number of 6,713 retirees declared as ghost workers by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State Government was able to confirm the existence of 5,830 retirees while 883 could not be reached.
“The implication of this is that the percentage claim payable to Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd reduced drastically by virtue of the fact that the said Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd attempted to reap where she did not sow by inflating the number of ghost workers/retirees to 15,161 when in actual fact, the unseen workers/retirees are about 1,316,” the statement noted.
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