Osun Government Rejects Claims of 8,452 Ghost Workers, Alleges Consultant Manipulated Audit Figures
The Osun State Government has firmly dismissed claims that over 8,400 ghost workers were uncovered during a recent payroll audit, accusing the consulting firm behind the exercise of inflating figures in an attempt to secure higher financial compensation.
Global Mirror News gathered that the controversial audit was conducted by Sally Tibbot Limited between June and December 2023.
The firm’s Executive Vice Chairman, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, had earlier told Journalists that 8,452 ghost workers were discovered on the state payroll, allegedly costing Osun State about ₦13.7 billion annually.
She further disclosed that 125 personnel were deployed for the exercise, with over ₦600 million reportedly spent on the audit.
However, in a strongly worded statement obtained by Global Mirror News, the Osun State Government, through the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, rejected the claims, describing them as “a subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the State.”
According to Alimi, the workers labeled as ghost employees were in fact legitimate staff of the state.
He stated that the Government was willing to provide evidence to prove the existence of all the affected workers if requested, but the consulting firm neither sought such verification nor issued an acceptance letter based on the 1,316 workers that were initially flagged as unverified.
Global Mirror News reports that the Commissioner further raised concerns about the consultant’s fee structure, noting that Sally Tibbot’s payment was tied to the amount of money it claimed to have “saved” the State by identifying and removing names from the payroll.
This, he alleged, created an incentive for the firm to exaggerate the number of ghost workers.
Alimi accused the firm of “high-handedness” and “deliberate maltreatment of workers” during the audit, adding that Sally Tibbot Consulting classified 8,448 workers and 6,713 retirees as ghost personnel without making adequate efforts to reach them to determine the reasons for their absence.
According to the Government’s own verification exercise, Global Mirror News gathered that 8,015 of the workers were confirmed to be active, while only 433 could not be reached. Among retirees, 5,830 were verified, while 883 were unreachable.
This, the Commissioner said, significantly reduced the amount of savings attributable to the audit and, by extension, the consultant’s entitlement.
He further alleged that the firm attempted to claim payment based on 15,161 alleged ghost personnel, even though the actual number of unverified individuals stood at about 1,316.
The Commissioner revealed that after a comprehensive review, the Government’s verification committee established that the total annual savings from the exercise amounted to only ₦27,077,847.60, a far cry from the ₦1.31 billion projected by the consulting firm.
The committee therefore recommended that salaries and pensions of the 1,316 unverified personnel be suspended and that Sally Tibbot Limited be paid ₦48,740,125.68, representing the agreed percentage of the verified savings.
Global Mirror News reports that the Osun State Government has insisted it will not endorse or implement any audit outcome that would “further defraud the state,” stressing that while it remains committed to sanitizing the payroll system, it will not remove legitimate workers based on what it described as manipulated and unverified data.
