Osun Government Denies N13bn Payroll Fraud Allegation, Accuses Consultant of Padding Report

The Osun State Government has refuted allegations of a N13 billion payroll scam made against it by auditing firm Sally Tibbot Limited, accusing the company of declaring 15,000 government staff and retirees as “ghost workers” in a bid to claim a N2 billion commission.

In a statement issued on Friday in Osogbo, the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, responded to claims made by the firm’s Chief Executive Officer, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, during a Channels Television interview on Thursday.

Bakrin-Ottun had alleged that the Adeleke administration refused to implement the staff verification report despite its exposure of payroll fraud.

However, Alimi stated that verification of the audit report confirmed that more than two-thirds of those labelled as ghost workers were actually bona fide staff with full identification and documentation.

“We inform the public that the governor will be happy if 15,000 ghost workers can truly be fished out. This was the reason why the Governor initially insisted against all odds that the audit report must be fully implemented before credible loopholes were discovered in the report,” Alimi said.

The commissioner explained that the consultant was hired to sanitise the payroll inherited from the previous administration but ended up labelling many active workers as ghost staff.

According to Alimi, a review committee later discovered that out of 8,448 workers declared as unseen by Sally Tibbot, 8,015 were confirmed as active workers, while only 433 were found to be unreachable. Similarly, out of 6,713 retirees declared as ghost pensioners, the committee confirmed 5,830, with 883 unreachable.

“Sally Tibbot which had already inflated total alleged ghost workers to 15,000 to claim a payment of about Two Billion Naira was in desperation as the percentage claim to the firm has drastically reduced as total unreachable number of workers was less than 1000, which eventually reduced the consultant payment to about forty seven million naira,” Alimi stated.

He further noted that the governor welcomed the firm’s call for anti-corruption agencies to investigate the matter, saying, “The governor has nothing to hide especially as the payroll audit in question was between 2018 to November 2023.”

Addressing the involvement of the governor’s elder brother, Dr Deji Adeleke, Alimi explained that he intervened after receiving information that bona fide civil servants were being wrongly declared as ghost workers.

“He intimated the governor of emerging negative reports and the governor in a bid to validate the audit report brought the consultant to Dr Deji’s residence to prove the validity of her report,” Alimi said.

The commissioner also revealed that the audit report was ultimately rejected after the consultant’s technical team confirmed that their proposed payroll system had never been tested anywhere, raising concerns for the government.

Following the discrepancies discovered, the government has implemented a homegrown payroll reform and reiterated its readiness for intervention by anti-corruption agencies.

Efforts to reach Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun for reaction to the allegations of report padding were unsuccessful, as calls to her line did not connect and she had not responded to a WhatsApp message as of the time of filing this report.