by Azeez Adeniyi

The Federal Government has started working towards recovering pensions paid so far into the Retirement Savings Accounts of ghost workers.

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun said her ministry is working with the National Pension Commission to recover the pensions.

She added that about 53,000 ghost workers had so far been removed from the Federal Government payroll.

Adeosun stated, “The Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit came in so that they can check the payroll and make sure that we pay the right amount and ghost workers do not exist; there is no fraud and that there is no error in the payroll.

“So far, we have removed 53,000 people from the payroll and we are working with PenCom to recover some of the pensions because the problem with these ghost salary earners is that not only are we paying their salaries, we are also paying pensions.

“So, we are trying to recover some of the overpaid pensions from some of the people we have removed from the payroll.”

Adeosun said before the commencement of the continuous audit initiative, the wage bill of the government was huge, standing at about N165bn monthly.

She stated, “The wage bill when we started was N165bn a month, and that was huge. It’s a huge bill and we have N16bn for pensions and another one for overheads.

“And so by the time you add statutory transfers to agencies like the judiciary, the National Assembly, INEC and other statutory agencies, you will have N200bn every month before you can have anything to spend on capital projects.

“So, we set a priority that we need to control this. It’s a continuous battle and the real thing is that we are using technology to make sure we are paying people using the biometric system, which ensures that you cannot get two salaries and ensures that the number of personnel is the same as the number on the payroll.”

Azeez