Bauchi State Governor, Mohammed Abubakar
The Government of Bauchi State said it had discovered 6,065 ghost workers on its payroll.
The discovery followed the workers’ verification the state
government compelled all civil servants to do since January this year.
According to The Punch, the state Governor, Mohammed Abubakar,
disclosed this during an interactive session with members of the
Correspondents’ Chapel, Nigeria Union of Journalists, Bauchi State
Council, at the Government House, Bauchi, on Sunday.
He admitted that there were lapses in the last rounds of the exercise in the state.
He said there were two set of errors in the last phase of the
verification. The errors, he said, were human mistake which he
apologised for, while he described the other as “deliberate sabotage.”
Abubakar said the state government was already using administrative
rule to investigate workers involved in the sabotage, saying those
found guilty would be dealt according to the law.
“During the exercise, we discovered 6,065 ghost workers on the
payroll of the Bauchi State Government. This number could not be rated
as small because even if you get 10 ghost workers, the exercise will be
worth it as they will be taking much money illegally.
“There were lapses during the exercise and they were
continuous. Don’t forget; the forces that endangered this phenomenon of
ghost workers are very strong forces. They have been entrenched over
time and a lot of money is being siphoned out of the coffers of the
government.
“Those forces will not fold their arms and allow us to put a
stop to their activities; so they were fighting us all through. It is
not as if it will happen today and stop tomorrow. They are creating all
sorts of bottlenecks for the system and that is why I’m saying the
verification is going to continue,” the governor said,
Abubakar, while recalling that the last round of workers’
verification was done using the public servants’ Bank Verification
Number, said the government would continue with the conduct of the
exercise physically with various means devised for the MDAs heads to do
it themselves.
“For instance in education, we have asked every principal and
headmaster to write a list of all his/her members of staff and sign
under, knowing full well that he/she is going to be responsible for that
list. So, we have a basis to continue with the exercise,” he stated.
The governor, who said he could not disclose the amount so far
saved from the past verification, attributed the inability to the
garnishee order placed by an Industrial Court against the account of
the state government for the non-payment of the April 2016 workers’
salaries.
He said that his government would embark on yet another round of
workers’ verification to enable it to access the Federal Government’s
budget support programme.
“So, verification is the policy of the Federal Government of
Nigeria and it is also the policy of the Bauchi State Government, but I
said we in Bauchi are going to do it differently,” he said.
He explained that the state government would not stop the payment
of salaries during the verification of workers, stressing however that
the exercise was not going to be a special occasion for anymore in which
a committee would be set up to go round the MDAs.
“The verification is going to be routine; the heads of the MDAs will continue with the exercise as their responsibility,” he said.
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