The Federal Government has uncovered 11,000 ghost workers on its payroll in its second batch of staff audit.

This new discovery is coming on the heels of the 23,000 ghost workers that were deleted from the government’s payroll in February.

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, made the disclosure to State House correspondents on Wednesday at the end of a meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal- both joined the Finance Minister in the briefing.

Adeosun said her ministry was using computer techniques to investigate the 11,000 affected cases while stating that once the cases are resolved, Nigerians would be intimated of the number of names deleted from the payroll.

“On the issue of the ghost workers, of the 23,000 that we had removed, our payroll has reduced by N2.29bn per month. The update on that is that we are now investigating another potential 11,000.”

“Again, we are using computer techniques to identify those who we need to investigate. So we are now looking at the second batch and as we resolve those cases, we will inform you of the amount saved and the number of people removed.”

The minister further revealed that the FEC had approved the presidential initiative on continuous audit of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

“The FEC deliberated extensively on the need for this and agreed that the control framework over finance and spending of government’s money needed to be strengthened especially in anticipation of the approval of the budget, which is an extended expenditure.”

“If we don’t strengthen our controls, then there is a risk that money would leak or be applied to the wrong things and therefore, the ability to go into various agencies without notice and check and do audits and updates to make sure that public money is being spent in accordance with our expectations and objectives.”

“FEC approved the setting up of this initiative effectively using an executive order to create internal audit to enable us to continue this work and to extend it to everywhere that federal money is being spent or received so that we can have better oversight.”