Kwara Governor Shocked, In Dilemma As HoS, 10 Perm Secs & Directors Involved In N500m Ghost Workers Fraud

The Point - No fewer than five permanent secretaries and five directors have been implicated in the half a billion naira monthly ghost workers’ scandal currently rocking the Kwara State Civil Service.

The revelations were made by highly placed multiple government sources, who spoke with our correspondent in Ilorin under condition of anonymity. The verification committee headed by Alhaji Isiaka Gold, who is also the Secretary to the State Government, had, while submitting its report to Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed recently said they uncovered a total of 8,863 ghost workers, who had been illegally drawing over N440 million monthly from the state’s treasury .

How I Increase My Blokos Size & Stopped Premature Ejaculation Issues 

That Scattered My Relationship For 2years.. Click HERE for Details

A source described the scandal as a very big dilemma for the state government, adding that due to the number of high ranking civil servants indicted, the government had become confused about how best to treat the issue. He said, “At least 3 Permanent Secretaries and 5 directors and a former Head of service of the state are under watch, it is suspected that some of them are in the know and they may be shown the way out.

“The number of the uncovered ghost workers is alarming, was it through connivance or something else, we will find out and everything will be revealed for us to guard against such an abuse in future. Everything in this electronic age can be traced to specifics and adequate solution proffered.

Hopefully, we have a robust properly designed data base for workers in Kwara State.” Speaking in the same vein, a Government House source described the scandal as a major headache for the state

government. “The normal thing expected of the government is to have made the indicted officials scapegoats, but they are super civil servants and that is the dilemma.

“The government has lost billions of Naira to this scam in years in both the state and civil service discovered to be paying monthly salaries, allowances and entitlements to fictitious workers,” he said. However, in his reaction,the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor, Dr. Muideen Akorede, said that the government was still studying the committee’s report.

“We are waiting for the committee’s recommendations; we are still studying the situation. There is a grace period for those who may have genuine reasons for not turning up for verification. After

that period, which I believe is three months (we will have to check again), the figures will be reconfirmed and necessary measures adopted.

“The government recognises that the 9-month verification period was enough for all genuine workers and pensioners to be verified. There may still be people with genuine cases such as the sick, those living abroad or others. The final decision on perpetrators can only be taken after the buffer period. The new payroll based on the report will form the basis for paying salaries from this month. Claims and objections can then be looked into on a monthly basis,” Akorede added.

4yrs Salary Scandal: How Kwara Govt. Worsens Saraki's Predicament

TheNews - Kwara state government confirmation that it was paying Senator Bukola Saraki’s pension, instead of salary as stated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, has not helped the embattled senator.

Instead, it has only worsened the case against the Senator, as no public officer is entitled to draw money from two government sources at the same time, people with inside knowledge of government said.

Saraki governed Kwara state between 2003 and 2011.

When he became a senator of the Federal Republic in June 2011, all payments to him by Kwara ought to have stopped as he became engaged by the Federal Government as a senator and paid all emoluments of the office.

His pension or whatever the state wanted to cloak it therefore ought to have ceased or at worse one ought to have stopped for the other. Saraki is not known to have rejected the emoluments of a senator.

If the Kwara government felt rightly justified that they were doing the right thing, why did they stop remitting ‘pensions’ into his account from August 2015, after he became Senate President?

The constitution of the Federal Republic is crystal clear about the issue:

It says under the Code of Conduct rules that no public officer shall “Receive or be paid the emoluments of any public office at the same time as he receives or is paid the emoluments of any other public office”. The only exception when he could collect the money twice, is if he is not employed on full time basis.

Emphatically the Code of Conduct says:

(1) A public officer shall not, after his retirement from public service and while receiving pension from public funds, accept more than one remunerative position as chairman, director or employee of: a company owned or controlled by the government; or any public authority.

Kwara State Government has said that it did not continue paying former governor of the State and Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki salaries after he left office in May 2011.

In reaction to evidences tendered at the Senate President’s Code of Conduct Tribunal on Wednesday, that the Kwara government continued to pay salaries or pension to Bukola Saraki Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mr. Isiaka Gold explained that Saraki’s last salary was N291,474.00 for the month of May 2011.

“From June 2011, former Governor Saraki started receiving his pension which was N578,188.00 as other past governors in the country”.

The statement added that after the review of pensions of former political office holders by the State Pension Board, the former governor’s pension increased to N1,239,493.94 monthly from October 2014 to date.

Kwara State Government in the statement dismissed the allegations as false and misleading.

So the Senate President clearly has run foul of the law, collecting Senate salary and also ‘pension’ as former governor.