Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has disclosed that the Federal Government is currently working to reveal another set of 11,000 ghost workers on its payroll in its second batch of staff audit.
The minister made this disclosure to State House correspondents on Wednesday at the end of a meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.
She said as soon as the cases were resolved, Nigerians would be informed of the amount saved and the number of names removed again from the payroll.
According to Adeosun, “On the issue of the ghost workers, of the 23,000 that we had removed, our payroll has reduced by N2.29bn per month.
“The update on that is that we are now investigating another potential 11,000.
“Again, we are using computer techniques to identify those who we need to investigate.
“So we are now looking at the second batch and as we resolve those cases, we will inform you of the amount saved and the number of people removed.”
“The FEC deliberated extensively on the need for this and agreed that the control framework over finance and spending of government’s money needed to be strengthened especially in anticipation of the approval of the budget, which is an extended expenditure.
“If we don’t strengthen our controls, then there is a risk that money would leak or be applied to the wrong things and therefore, the ability to go into various agencies without notice and check and do audits and updates to make sure that public money is being spent in accordance with our expectations and objectives.
“FEC approved the setting up of this initiative effectively using an executive order to create internal audit to enable us to continue this work and to extend it to everywhere that federal money is being spent or received so that we can have better oversight.”
