The Bauchi State Government has discovered 89 ghost doctors on its payroll, the commissioner for work in the state said on Wednesday.
Works commissioner, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, who briefed journalists during a press conference shortly after a meeting of the State Executive Council, said the discovery was made during verification of all civil servants on the state’s payroll.
Ibrahim, who expressed concerns at the discovery, alleged that there is a “cult that is holding Bauchi to ransom.
He said, “89 doctors that are working somewhere, who were sponsored by the Bauchi state government, collecting salaries here and elsewhere.
“They are collecting collecting salaries from Bauchi state and also collecting salaries elsewhere, they just sit down and get alert without working in Bauchi. As a result of this exercise we are doing now of cleaning the payroll system, that is how we are beginning to discover so many of these things.
“And believe you me, what we are discovering are so terrible and horrible. We discovered one single person collecting salary from the local government, collecting salary from LEA, collecting salary from health care and collecting salary from Bauchi state.
“And with this system we are employing, when his BVN and his number were put there, his picture appeared there. If we don’t correct it, how would it be corrected.”
The Commissioner said that a team was sent to some states to some states to see how they were sanitizing their civil service saying that once a person is found to be involved in such criminal acts, he will be prosecuted lamenting that the situation is different in Bauchi.
“In Bauchi, we have multiple people having the passport, they will promise you that at the end of the month, they will improve your salary from grade level 14 to grade level 15 and so be it, how can be allow this to continue?
“If you see these kind of things and the atrocities being committed there, you’ll be shocked. But we are determined to correct this, we’ll do it one day and our graduates roaming the streets without any work will have work to do,” he stated.
According to him, “some of them that are working like a cult collecting that money every month,” will not relent pointing out that “for the past three to five months, that is what we are been battling with from such people that have formed themselves into a syndicate.”
The former Head of Service said that it was discovered in the process, a bulk of money with fictitious account numbers, people that are not in existence but at the end of the month, money earmarked, about N20 million will be posted into those fictitious account numbers that are non-existent.
He said: “They will hit the account and then bounce back and those people that are beneficiaries will cleverly and softly, take away this money. I was once the Head of the Civil service but I never knew the magnitude of the kind of atrocities being committed in our payroll system until I was privileged to be in a committee that is looking into these things.
“The earlier we correct this, the better, otherwise, as we move on, the state will come to a halt and nothing will move again, this is because these people are busy fighting. They will go left, right and center, they will go to the social media, media house and keep making noise.”
Ibrahim said that some students sponsored by the government to go and study medicine and placed on level four so that when the finish their university and do their housemanship, the government will upgrade them.
“But we have students that have even been dismissed from the university studying medicine but they are collecting salary from Bauchi state for the past 10 to 15 years. It is as a result of this exercise that we are extracting and removing them.
“For example, somebody is reading Sociology, he was admitted to study medicine because he was not able to meet up, he had to change course, but he refused to come forward so that the system will automatically remove him from the payroll,” he stated.