Civil servants defrauding Borno state – Governor says

chika ebuzor

September 1, 2016 6:53 PM

Shettima also threatened not to pay salaries until the ongoing verification exercise is completed.

Borno Governor, Kashim Shettima

The Governor of Borno state,

Shettima alleged that the civil servants hire people to pose as workers in the state to get ATM cards, which they use to withdraw money.

He also said “These crop of senior civil servants would own dozens of such ATMs with which they use to collect salaries on behalf of these ghost workers,” the governor said while speaking to journalists on the ongoing salary verification controversy that has denied workers July salary.

“We have issued a warning to the banks that we are going to withdraw our money from their banks if they continue be accessories to these crimes of ghost workers.”

Adding that “We have been able to uncover how some civil servants would give some persons just N2000 to open accounts as civil servants and bring the ATM to them. Some have up to 40 of such ATM cards for salary accounts with them.

“Now that the banks are helping us to expose the criminals, we have warned that any of them that collude with any top shot in the civil servant will have the full weight to the laws descending on them and we are going to delist them from the list of banks from our service.”

This decision has not gone down with Labour leaders in the state, who said the verification exercise is causing a delay in the payment of their salaries.

Speaking further, The Governor said “So far we have about 12,000 workers out of the 19,000 that have been physically verified, that have successfully completed biometric data capturing and certified as genuine workers in the state civil service, whom we are going to pay their salaries for the last two months.

“I have listened to such plea in June when they came crying that embarking on the verification exercise would make it difficult for the larger Muslim population to celebrate the end of Ramadan Sallah. But business cannot continue to go as usual; one has to take the bold decision to do the right thing. We cannot continue like this.”

The Borno state Governor also revealed that his administration has uncovered over 10,000 ghost workers.

chika ebuzor