N3.5bn salary fraud uncovered in Benue”s payroll

A total of N3.514 billion salary fraud has been uncovered on the Benue State Civil Service payroll following the ongoing verification exercise to ascertain the over bloated wage of the state. The latest finding was contained in the phase II report of the Salary Verification Committee headed by a retired permanent secretary, Tersegha Ikyaabo, and […]

A total of N3.514 billion salary fraud has been uncovered on the Benue State Civil Service payroll following the ongoing verification exercise to ascertain the over bloated wage of the state.

The latest finding was contained in the phase II report of the Salary Verification Committee headed by a retired permanent secretary, Tersegha Ikyaabo, and submitted to Governor Samuel Ortom on January 17, this year.

According to Ikyaabo’s report, the over N3.514b  salary fraud was in excess payments to undeserving staff in seven of the Benue state’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with staff strength of 8,913 between June 2015 and April 2017.

He stated that the seven MDAs included; the Benue State Teaching Service Board (TSB), Hospital Management Board (HMB) and five tertiary institution of Akawe Torkula College of Advanced and Professional Studies in Makurdi, Benue State Polytechnic in Ugbokolo, the Colleges of Education in Kastina Ala and Oju respectively as well as Akperan Orshi College of Agriculture, Yandev.

The report also indicated that the recent discoveries of 8,913 staff strength in the seven MDAs were slightly lower than the 10, 300 staff uncovered in the first phase of the committee’s findings which uncovered the sum of N1.4 billion wrongly paid to some workers in 60 MDAs in the state between June 2015 and October 2016.

While the document further showed that N301.7 million was paid to non-existing workers who failed to appear before for exercise conducted and their whereabouts was not even known to the managements of their alleged various MDAs just as retired workers whose names should no longer be on the payroll received N619.6million.

The verification committee however removed from the payroll employees that got into

the system through the backdoor, and demoted those that had been promoted without requisite professional and academic qualifications based on various service schemes.

Ikyaabo’s committee said the feat was achieved through the technology provided by Remita and the support of its consultants in collaboration with the state’s Ministry of Finance, stressing that with the updated data, the  payroll process became much easier, eliminates possibilities of fraud, and better positions the state to meet its obligations to its employees.

The committee’s discoveries may not be unconnected with the alleged discrepancies which affected workers January remuneration as most of them complained to have been short paid occasioned by the ‘cleaned’ data which was said to be reviewed and approved by the Commissioner for Finance and used for salary payment last month.

Governor Samuel Ortom who set up the Ikyaabor’s committee had in December last year announced his administration intention to reduce the state’s monthly wage bill from 7.8 billion to N4.5billion, stressing that the decision to trimmed down was based on the fact that it ranked the third highest wage bill of states in the country.

Meanwhile, the State’s House of Assembly in its bid to intervene on the January salary discrepancies has summoned key officers of the state’s Ministry of Finance, including the Commissioner for Finance, Head of Service, and the Remita consultants among others for an explanation on the matter.