Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency has identified the Nigeria Police Force and several federal ministries among the institutions with the highest number of suspected ghost workers after a nationwide payroll verification exercise uncovered what it described as extensive fraud within the federal civil service.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said it had identified 908 suspected ghost workers across at least 50 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), recovering about ₦942m allegedly paid out in fraudulent salaries.
Speaking on the findings of the investigation, ICPC chairman Musa Adamu Aliyu said the exercise revealed systematic manipulation of government payrolls, with fictitious employees and unauthorised names inserted to siphon public funds.
According to the commission, ghost workers are non-existent employees whose names are fraudulently added to government payrolls to enable officials or their collaborators to divert salaries.
Aliyu, a senior advocate of Nigeria, described one case in which a suspect allegedly enrolled members of his own family on the federal payroll.
Investigators found that the individual had placed the names of his wife, son and mother-in-law on the salary register while also collecting the wages of 12 legitimate workers, he said.
The Nigeria Police Force accounted for the largest number of suspected ghost workers uncovered during the exercise, with 570 names flagged for investigation.
“For this operation, we identified 570 people whom we suspect are among the fake workers collecting salaries without working,” Aliyu said.
The National Water Resources Authority recorded the second-highest figure, with 80 suspected ghost workers.
“For this agency, we identified 80 names of people collecting salaries even though they are not workers of the agency,” he said.
The Federal Ministry of Works was found to have 56 suspected ghost workers, followed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with 24 and the Ministry of Defence with 19.
“For the Ministry of Defence, we identified 19 people acting as fake workers,” Aliyu added.
The investigation also identified 17 suspected ghost workers each in the Federal Ministry of Electricity and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, while the Federal Ministry of Health recorded 15 and the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation 12.
The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Federal Ministry of Interior were also named among institutions affected by payroll fraud, although the commission did not disclose the number of suspected ghost workers identified in the two offices.
The findings, reported by BBC Pidgin on Wednesday, are part of the ICPC’s broader investigation into payroll fraud across federal government institutions, an issue that has long been cited as a major source of revenue leakage and corruption within Nigeria’s public sector.
