The federal government has uncovered how civil servants
manipulate the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) to perpetuate fraud.
This was revealed after 23,000 ghost workers were found to have
registered on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS)
used by government to pay salaries of public workers.
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun who disclosed this said
the discovery was made due to the registration of over 320,000 personnel on the
IPPIS platform using their BVN numbers.
Adeosun told the senate committee on Finance Thursday in Abuja
that the IPPIS-BVN linkage showed “that there are people who appear on our
payroll multiple times.
“BVN links all the accounts of that person, so we are seeing in
our payroll, 20 names to one BVN number.”
The minister said government would go after banks to recover all
monies paid to the ghost workers at the end of investigations.
She also said payment of the 23,000 suspected workers would be
suspended for one month to allow investigations to be completed, adding that
any bank found guilty of collusion would be made to refund all the money paid
through them.”
She said: “We have had a meeting on how we are going to
clean them off, the process will be that we will suspend that person from the
payroll pending the investigation.
“We will try as much as possible to conclude that investigation
within 30 days so that we do not suffer innocent people, but we really need to
clean our payroll.
“We have about 23,000 that we need to investigate: those whom
either the BVN is linked to multiple payment or the name on the BVN account is
not consistent with the name on our own payroll.
“Not only will we remove those people from our payroll, but we
will also be going after the banks involved to collect our money.
“So some of the information that we are getting is how long has
this person been on the pay roll, how much has he had been getting.
“In some getting the accounts are held by the same bank and in
some cases all were opened on the same day.
“If we are able to prove that banks have colluded with people to
pad our payroll, we are not only going to stop those payments but we are also
going to try and recover our money.”
The minister said further that MDAs found culpable in the scheme
would be referred to relevant agencies of government for further investigation
and prosecution.
The minister explained that in five years, the IPPIS was only
able to register 295 workers but with the BVN registration, the ministry
planned to register all workers by June.
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