Former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has revealed that the Federal Government identified approximately 45,000 ghost workers following the integration of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system into Nigeria’s public payroll.
According to Adeosun, the discovery was made during the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), which was linked with BVN data to verify the identity of government employees.
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The exercise exposed thousands of fictitious or duplicated entries that had been drawing salaries from government coffers.She explained that the BVN integration created a transparent verification layer, making it difficult for fraudulent identities to remain on the payroll.
By matching biometric and banking data, the system eliminated inconsistencies and flagged irregular salary payments tied to non-existent workers.The removal of these ghost workers contributed significantly to cost savings for the Federal Government, reducing recurrent expenditure and plugging leakages in the public finance system.
The reform was part of broader efforts to improve fiscal discipline and strengthen accountability in Nigeria’s public sector.The initiative also demonstrated how financial technology infrastructure, particularly the BVN system introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria, can be leveraged beyond banking to enhance governance and public sector efficiency.
The ghost worker crackdown formed a key component of the government’s anti-corruption and public financial management reforms, aimed at ensuring that salary payments are made only to verified and legitimate employees.
Source: Nairametrics
