N13.7b payroll fraud rocks Osun State
By Samuel Ogunsona
A forensic audit firm, Sally Tibbott Consulting Limited, has accused the Osun State Government of covering up a massive N13.7 billion annual payroll fraud.
In the big fraud, at least one person had the salaries of over 5000 ghost workers paid into his account.
In the rip off, over N1 billion is lost by the state every month to ghost workers.
While speaking on Channels Television on Thursday morning, the firm’s CEO, Ms. Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, revealed that the audit uncovered 8,452 ghost workers and 5,831 pensioners who failed to present themselves for verification.
The government had hired the firm in April 2023 to verify and re-engineer the state’s payroll system, but tensions arose when the firm submitted its report, exposing the alleged fraud.
The firm’s legal counsel, J.T.O. Uwazuruike, stated that the dispute has gone beyond unpaid contractual fees, with the government challenging the firm’s integrity.
The consultants have now petitioned the EFCC and ICPC to investigate those allegedly responsible for siphoning billions of naira from the state treasury. The allegations include multiple salary payments into single accounts, with one account receiving 962 separate salaries monthly and another receiving 5,615 monthly salaries.
The Osun State Government has denied the allegations, accusing the consulting firm of professional misconduct and exaggerating figures to increase its earnings.
However, stakeholders are calling for transparency and an independent probe to clarify the true state of Osun’s payroll system
