Discovery of 45,000 Ghost Workers On Payroll Saves Gov’t N100 billion

The Federal Government yesterday disclosed that about 45,000 ghost workers have been uncovered in 215 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government under the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS).

Minister of state for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama who disclosed this while briefing state house correspondents on the performance of the ministry in the last one year added that the discovery has saved government over N100billion.

The minister spoke along with his Information counterpart, Mr. Labaran Maku, at the end of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, and meeting in Abuja yesterday.

Ngama said that the adoption of the IPPS had saved the country about N100bn.

"We have registered over 153,000 federal government workers. But compared to the total number of staff that used to get salaries in these MDAs, we have seen a gap of 45,000 people missing. So, we have already declared that they are ghost workers.

Ngama added that further staff audit would still be conducted in 320 MDAs that were yet to be captured in the bio-data verification exercise.

"We have about 320 MDAs that we have not covered and when we cover this, we may actually discover more and reduce the total payroll cost to the country" he said.

According to Ngama, the government is planning to increase capital expenditure to 60 per cent and reduce recurrent expenditure to 40 percent.

The target, he said, is to reduce the fiscal responsibility of 6.11per cent to 2.17 this year and ultimately bring it down to about 1.7per cent.

Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan also set up a special committee to verify Nigeria's assets abroad. It is valued at billions of naira

Maku, while briefing State House correspondents, explained that members of the committee would move round the world and take inventory of Nigeria's assets.

He stressed that the assets are mostly that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, the Nigerian Navy and other agencies.

The committee, which is headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Olugbenga Ashiru, has representatives from the Federal Ministries of Finance, Housing and Urban Development, Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP).