Governor Bala Mohammed is Bauchi state has revealed that there is monumental fraud in the salary system, with payroll fraud accounting for more than 35% of the total accounting fraud and employee theft in the state.
The governor made the revelation at a media parley with stakeholders, held to discuss the challenges of salary payment in the state and local government councils on Thursday.
According to him, “In the year 2015, the salary bill for Bauchi state combined was less than 4.5 billion. As I address you, we are near the N7 billion-mark. We have not employed. Even though some civil servants have retired or passed on, we continue to experience exponential rise in our salary bill.
“I must say this from the onset. I am sad, very sad that by act of commission, collusion and distortion, Bauchi is facing a monumental task of sorting out what is clearly a corrupted salary regime.
“I promised workers during my campaign that I will sort out the mess associated with our salaries. Yes, I have kept my promise by ensuring that workers are paid as at when due. In fact, we pay salaries on or before the 26th of every month. But we are still not there yet. The reason is simple and painful.
“The civil service in Bauchi state has suffered from systematic attrition bastardized by fraudulent practices and outright corruption. My predecessors, who attempted to sanitize the system, either lack the courage, political will or they were frustrated by cartel or beneficiaries of this organized financial criminality,” Mohammed stated.
Read the remaining part of the governor’s speech below:
What appeared to be at first a simple issue of aligning nominal and payrolls and sorting out the arithmetic, suddenly turned to be a problem that seems to defy all known formula that will bring an answer or a solution. Clearly, the problem was much more challenging than I earlier envisaged.
In the year 2015, the salary bill for Bauchi State combined was less than 4.5 billion. As I address you, we are near the N7 billion-mark. We have not employed. Even though some civil servants have retired or passed on, we continue to experience exponential rise in our salary bill.
What we have done in government is to employ global best practice (Technology Data Key). We also need credible experts to drive both in order to succeed.
Consequently, we engaged the services of a Financial Management Consultant, DYNATECH who will be speaking to you shortly, to give us a head start at finding solutions. The initial findings are mind boggling. For example:
- Payroll fraud account for more than 35% of Accounting Fraud and employee theft in the state
- Lack of credible Nominal Roll in the State contributed to that hence the need to drive the payroll using the nominal roll
- Head of Civil Service and other Chief Executives having no hold of their nominal rolls
- Lack of adequate payroll fraud mechanism that will check the activities of the fraudsters lead to the unchecked activities over these period
- Ghost workers, civil servants falsifying allowances and other fraud in payrolls have frozen employment thereby creating a huge vacuum in the service delivery as well as generation gap in the State Service
- In fact, in Bauchi state, one can easily be a pensioner, get paid without ever working and can even earn arrears in payment.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have schools with several teachers captured on the payroll. When you pay a visit, you will see no teachers or at best three where twenty are reelected. You visit a hospital with no Doctors and very few nurses, yet that facility has several Doctors, Nurses and Midwives reflected on the payroll. This is the story in nearly every government establishment.
Presently, we have identified and removed 1,279 (one thousand two hundred and seventy nine) staff from the payroll of the State Ministry of Health, among them almost one hundred Doctors collecting salaries when they are not physically on ground in this state.
In the Ministry of Education, we have Six Thousand Staff reflected on the payroll while the Head of Service has a record of Five Thousand staff which was sent four days ago to the Ministry. There is the case of One Hundred and Eleven staff whose salaries were stopped by the State Treasurer due to inconsistencies recorded between their nominal and payroll records.
Let me be frank with you all. Bauchi is at the crossroads. We must decide to either take the bull by the horn or to allow the monster to take us down. In my view, we must deliver a knockout punch to the devil in the payroll. Even in our state of anger at this fraudulent way conducting Government business we must act in a scientific manner by developing technology to drive data in addressing the problem.
For instance, at the Ministry of Education an extensive survey of personnel data from various sources is ongoing. These sources are the payroll, nominal roll, open personal files, TSC files and finger print terminal records. Even staff paid under the Ministry must feature in all the different sources, otherwise the discrepancy must be sorted out before he or she can be permanently placed on the new nominal roll. All records of personal files in the Ministry, Zonal offices and TSC have been called to the Ministry and keying of their necessary information into Ministry’s data base has been completed.
The preliminary matching of the data has shown discrepancies in personnel employment records, their date of birth or date of first appointment, absence in TSC record reinstatement after death, physical absence by lack of appearance on the finger print terminal, continued payment to the data etc. We can not disclose numbers and names now at the middle of the exercise, but when the exercise is completed in a week or two, the details of the discrepancies will emerge and be made public if necessary.
The survey of staff in SUBEB and other agencies under the Ministry has also started. They will follow the same pattern as that of the Ministry. For example, previous SUBEB nominal roll was about Thirty-Three Thousand staff. It EMIS record shows Twenty Six Thousand, One Hundred and Seventy three, its audit records just above Twenty Eight Thousand, while the class attendance is Twenty three Thousand, perhaps excluding those on leave. From the look of things, some time we will be required to perfect the records and it will be done no matter the odds.
This parley is not to malign any person or group of persons. It is not meant to ridicule or blackmail anyone. It is not a witch-hunt either. Rather, we must, as a responsible government, provide a platform of consensus building on how to protect our commonwealth from a corrupt and decadent cartel that seems determined to enjoy illegal salaries while our workers and citizens sink deeper into abject poverty.
We must identify them, name them, prosecute them and if found guilty, jail them. We must recover the loot from them and their collaborators. Anything short of this will mean surrendering our future and generations yet unborn. Posterity will not forgive us if we just sit back and fold our arms. That is why this Media Parley is apolitical. We have invited all stakeholders, political parties, respected technocrats, notable elders, financial experts, organised labour as well as private sector and every citizens to discuss the way forward.
The Secretariat will note down every contribution. Government is here to listen to every point of view and aggregate all the issues. We will utilize the outcome of this parley by factoring your contributions on the way out of this mess. No one, I repeat, no one under my watch will be molested or witch-hunted for his or her contributions. You are equally free to write the Government and address your letters to the Secretary to the State Government if you are listening on the Radio
I want to use this opportunity to appeal for the cooperation of all civil servants in the State, we must free resources in order to employ our young citizens and address critical issues of infrastructure and services to our people. But first, we must have a dependable and credible database to the greater glory of our workers and for the benefit of our citizens in general.
Thank you God bless and Bauchi State.
