Benue uncovers 500 ghost workers on payroll

At least 500 ghost workers have been detected in the Benue State government payroll by consultants, following the ongoing verification exercise to ascertain the overbloated wage bill of the state.

The state House of Assembly in its bid to intervene ondiscrepancies in the January salaries had summoned key officers of the state’s Ministry of Finance including the Commissioner for Finance, Head of Service and Remita Consultants, among others, for an explanation.

The Deputy Governor,Engr. Benson Abounu, who is the chairman of the State of Emergency on Salary Committee, also appeared before the lawmakers on Thursday and commended the consultants for effectively identifying 500 nonexistent workers.

The deputy governor also disclosed that the data used by the consultants did not come from his committee despite the directive by Governor Samuel Ortom that the report be used for the payment of January salaries. He insisted that there was no need to hire a consultant to handle payment of salaries in the state because the bulk of the job was painstakingly being done by his committee.

Abounu maintained that based on the findings of his committee, the total wage bill of the state had been reduced from N7.8billion to N5.5billion.

Earlier, the chairman, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Dr. Philip Tachin, who also appeared before the House, commended the consultants, saying, since they took over payment of salaries from SUBEB in 2017, the abnormalities that usually characterised payment of salaries had been eliminated.