The Kano State Government has uncovered that 217 workers were the same Bank Verification Number (BVN).
This is part of the alarming irregularities in uncovered in the state payroll system, as 240 employees were found to be receiving double payments.
This was disclosed during a press briefing by Dr. Sulaiman Wali Sani, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Civil Service Matters and Chairman of the State Coordinating Committee tasked with cleansing the government’s payroll.
Dr. Sani, who represented the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) during the briefing, said the revelations were part of an ongoing efforts to sanitize the state’s civil service and fulfill Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s campaign promise of ensuring prompt and full payment of workers’ entitlements.
He said the findings followed a biometric verification exercise and the work of two standing committees, one on state payroll and another on local government payroll: established to scrutinize the wage structure.
“Inherited shortcomings in the payroll system have continued to disturb the government. We discovered that 240 employees are drawing double salaries while 217 individuals are operating under the same BVN, suggesting possible cases of ghost workers or identity manipulation,” Dr. Sani stated.
He added that a total of 1,335 workers had also failed to report for verification for over six months, raising further concerns about the authenticity of many names on the government’s payroll.
In his remarks, Alhaji Umar Idi, Chairman of the Local Government Standing Committee, revealed that a recent audit uncovered 247 questionable names on local government and primary healthcare payrolls, including retirees, deceased persons, and cases of unauthorized staff elongation.
“Out of these 247 workers, only eight appeared before the committee to confirm their employment status. The remaining 239 names have been flagged for deletion, saving the government a total of N27,824,395 monthly,” he explained.
