” The ministry, through the monitoring department and other stakeholders have concluded a local government junior staff verification of about 58,143 workers, comprising of scheduled and unscheduled staff.

The Sokoto State Government said on Thursday that it had discovered no fewer than 12,915 `ghost workers,’ padded into the payrolls of the 23 local government areas of the state.

Alhaji Mannir Dan-Iya, the Commissioner for Local Government and Community Development, disclosed this at a media briefing in Sokoto.

” The ministry, through the monitoring department and other stakeholders have concluded a local government junior staff verification of about 58,143 workers, comprising of scheduled and unscheduled staff.

” The verification exercise yielded fruitful result, whereby about 12, 915 workers, comprising of seat-at-home and ghost workers were fished out of the local governments’ staff payrolls.

” The state government also saved over N 319 million from the exercise, hence, it was a huge success,” he said.

Dan-Iya said that the ministry is planning to conduct a similar verification exercise of senior staff, whose salaries are paid through their respective banks.

He also said that issues that arose from the exercise, mostly associated with ” human errors” were being addressed in collaboration with stakeholders.

Dan-Iya added that the ministry had boosted the internally generated revenues of the local governments by engaging consultants.( NAN)