It was discovered that 240 employees in Kano State were getting duplicate payments, and that 217 more people have the same Bank Verification Number (BVN).
In a statement issued on Sunday, Dr. Sulaiman Wali Sani, the chairman of the State Coordinating Committee and Special Advisor to Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf on Civil Service Matters, affirmed this on behalf of the state government.
Sani, speaking on behalf of the Secretary to the State Government, disclosed during a Kano news briefing that this discovery resulted from a biometric verification process carried out by two standing committees.
According to reports, one committee handles the payroll for the state, and the other one handles the payroll for the local government.
He underlined that this concerning discovery is a component of the government’s continuous effort to clean up the civil service and fulfill the present administration’s election pledges.
Government disruptions have persisted due to inherited flaws in the payroll system.
“We found that 240 employees are receiving double salaries, and 217 people are using the same BVN, which may indicate instances of identity manipulation or ghost workers,” Sani stated.
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He said that after the notification was made more than six months ago, 1,335 employees did not show up for the verification process. Their absence, Sani said, is increasing doubts about the validity of many of the names on the government payroll.
According to remarks made by Alhaji Umar Idi, the Chairman of the Local Government Standing Committee, a recent audit found 247 suspicious names on the payrolls of primary healthcare and local government, including retirees, deceased people, and cases of unapproved staff extensions.
Of the 247 employees, only eight showed up to the committee to verify their job status.
“The remaining 239 names have been marked for removal, saving the government N27,824,395 every month,” he said.
