Alhaji Abdbullahi Hassan, the Chairman of Sokoto North Local Government Council, says his administration discovered 1,000 ghost workers after a recent staff verification exercise.
Hassan said in Sokoto on Tuesday that the administration had also recovered more than N13 million, as a result of the verification exercise.
He said, “We have discovered that some of the ghost workers, who were hitherto on the payroll of the local government were even working in other public and private organizations.
“Some of them were even housewives, secondary school students, political thugs and even some of them are currently staying outside the shores of Nigeria.”
According to Hassan, the ghost workers collect their salaries at the end of the month for doing nothing.
“This was how the funds of the local government were hitherto squandered to the detriment of the people of the area .
“In this type of situation , the local government could not execute the needed dividends of democracy,” he said.
Hassan further disclosed that the local government inherited more than 4,000 staff, as well as more than N40 million as its average monthly wage bill.
“This bill had now been been reduced to about N29 million including N9 million being paid as monthly allowances and imprests.
“We embarked on the verification exercise to block all loopholes, as well as to be able to effectively implement the new N18,000 national minimum wage,” he said.
Hassan said that the exercise was not meant to be a witch hunt, rather it was meant to make the local government to financially stand on its feet .
Meanwhile, the local government has re-deployed another 1,000 of its redundant staff to the Local Education Authority in the area.
The affected staff, Hassan explained, were to be posted to the various primary and junior secondary schools in the area.
“Some of them have degrees, diplomas, NCE and SSSCE certificates and they were discovered to be collecting only salaries monthly without doing any work .
“This was discovered during the just concluded verification exercise and most of them we suspect are working in other places,” he added .
Hassan said that the local government would place them on monthly allowances of between N5,000 and N10,000 like they were being paid before for doing nothing .
The gesture, the chairman, said was part of his administration’s efforts to improve the standard of education in the area.