Firm Asks EFCC To Probe Alleged N13.7bn Osun Payroll Fraud Cover-up

The management of Sally Tibbot Consulting Limited has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate an alleged annual payroll fraud of N13.7 billion uncovered in Osun State.

The firm alleged that the state government deliberately covered up payroll fraud it discovered and continued to pay ghost workers despite its recommendations.

Sally Tibbot’s CEO/ executive vice chairman, Ms Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, made the allegations while speaking with journalists in Lagos.

Bakrin-Ottun also presented findings from the forensic payroll audit allegedly commissioned by the Osun State Government on May 22, 2023, to the public.

She claimed that the audit, which covered the period from June to December 2023, reduced the payroll from N4.48 billion monthly for 37,456 staff and 17,918 pensioners to N3.34 billion for 29,004 verified staff, revealing 8,452 ghost workers.

Bakrin-Ottun stated that this translates to N1.14 billion in monthly savings and N13.72 billion annually for the state.

She, however, alleged that despite submitting the report on 27 June 2024 and publicly presenting it on 10 July 2024, the Osun Government has neither implemented the recommendations nor paid its contract fee of over N600 million.

The Auditor also alleged that a government committee led by the Chief of Staff to Governor Ademola Adeleke, Kazeem Akinleye, reportedly accomplished nothing.

Bakrin-Ottun said the firm deployed 125 staff amid “life-threatening” security challenges and that no re-verification was agreed upon after the report, describing officials as “perpetrators and accessories after the fact.”

She accuses the state government of damaging its reputation to conceal ongoing fraud, demanding investigations by both the EFCC and ICPC for prosecution.

Bakrin-Ottun maintained that the auditing firm will not yield to threats.

She called for the implementation of the audit’s recommendations, citing Rivers State’s recent achievement of N5 billion monthly savings through a similar audit process.

Reacting to the allegations, Osun State government on Saturday debunked allegations of cover up of ghost workers’ indictment within the state public service by a staff audit consultant ‘Sally Tibbot Limited’, describing the allegation as a subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the state.

Responding to the allegation of cover-up by the company, the state government in a statement by the commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Oluomo Kolapo Alimi said the unusual high numbers of alleged ghost workers declared by the consultant led to a re-verification exercise which revealed extensive inflation of the supposed number of ghost workers.

The revelation according to Alimi showed that those the company claimed were ghost workers showed up that they were legitimate employees of the state government.

The state government further proposed to furnish the company with proof of the existence of each of these workers, if the same is required though the company did not at any point in time request for such proof nor send an acceptance letter for payment based on about 1,316 workers who were not seen.

Submitting that it is within its right to review an audit report before implementation, the government noted that the existence of open gaps, verifiable lapses, several battles during the audit process and high number of ghost workers compelled the setting up of a verification committee as a prelude to the implementation of the staff audit report.

“Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd had declared 8,448 workers as unseen workers while 6,713 retirees were declared as ghost retirees. But the conclusion was arrived at by the company without making any efforts to call each of these workers to ascertain the reason for their absence.

“Upon the receipt of the report of the exercise carried out by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd, in order to avoid a situation where an honest worker would be declared a ghost worker only by reason of such worker’s absence from verification, especially if the reason for such absence is ill-health the Osun state government carried out an in-depth analysis of the report and the following was discovered:

“Out of the total number of 8,448 workers declared by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State Government was able to confirm 8,015 as active workers while 433 workers were found to be unreachable.

“Also, out of the total number of 6,713 retirees declared as ghost workers by Sally Tibbot Consulting (Nig.) Ltd as unseen workers, the Osun State government was able to confirm the existence of 5,830 retirees while 883 could not be reached”, the statement revealed.

The Osun State government therefore insisted that it stands by the recommendations of its re- verification committee and will act on it accordingly.