8-yr-old children on Bauchi govt payroll as teachers

The Bauchi State government has said it has discovered names of eight-year old children as “teachers” on the payroll of the government.

This was disclosed by the Accountant-General of the state and member of the state verification committee on ghost workers, Alhaji Abubakar Gabi, in Bauchi on Monday.

“We have discovered that names of children between eight and ten years of age appeared as ‘teachers’ on the payroll of the state.

“We also discovered that some of the pensioners duplicated their payment papers; had the same names, same BVN, same GSM numbers and same account numbers but bearing different photographs attached

The AG also said there were instances where deceased families who had earlier submitted death certificates of their heads and were paid bulk pension entitlements, fraudulently worked their way back and are still collecting pensions.

Continuing, Gabi said that 4,500 state civil servants out of the 33,000 inherited by the present administration in the state were ghost workers while 7,300 local government workers out of the 27,000 were ghost workers.

He also that explained that 7,300 teachers out of 29, 000 were also discovered to be ghost teachers.

Read also: 11,000 more Ghost Workers uncovered -Adeosun

“We have so far discovered over 19,000 ghost workers while only 7,000 pensioners out of the alleged 14,000 pensioners have turned up for screening,” he said.

It would be recalled that the state government had on March 9, 2016 declared that it had so far discovered 19,241 ghost workers and saved N797.46 million from the on-going verification exercise.

Reacting to the startling revelations, the state governor, Mohammed Abubakar, has vowed that perpetrators of the crime and their collaborators would be brought to book.

In a statement issued by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Abubakar Al-sadique, in Bauchi, Governor Abubakar said: “l assure you that persons found to have hands in the ghost workers issue will face the full wrath of the law, this is a promise.”

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