Eight-year-old 'teachers' discovered in Bauchi

The verification committee set up by the Bauchi state government says it has discovered names of children between the ages of 8-10 on the government’s payroll – The state accountant general noted that over 19,000 ghost workers have been uncovered – The state government has said that perpetrators of the crime will be punished Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Bauchi state government discovers eight-year-old ‘teachers’ on its payroll As part of efforts to rid the civil service of ghost workers, the verification committee set up by the Bauchi state government says it has discovered the names of children between eight and ten years old as ‘teachers’ on the state government’s payroll. The state accountant general, Abubakar Gabi disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday, March 14. Gabi explained that 4,500 state civil servants out of the 33,000 inherited by the present administration in the state were ghost workers adding that 7,300 local government workers out of the 27,000 handed over by the last administration were ghost workers. READ ALSO: Governor Abubakar threatens to send Yuguda to EFCC He noted that 7,300 teachers out of the 29,000 teachers handed over by the last administration were also discovered to be ghost teachers. “We have discovered that names of children between eight and ten years of age appeared as ‘teachers’ on the payroll of the state. “We also discovered that some of the pensioners duplicated their payment papers; had the same names, same BVN, same GSM numbers and same account numbers but bearing different photographs attached “Again we discovered instances where deceased families who had earlier submitted death certificates of their heads and were paid bulk pension entitlements, fraudulently working their way back and are still collecting pensions. “We have so far discovered over 19,000 ghost workers while only 7,000 pensioners out of the alleged 14,000 pensioners have turned up for screening,” he revealed. The state government had on March 9, 2016 declared that it had so far discovered 19,241 ghost workers and saved N797.46 million from the on-going verification exercise. Meanwhile, Mohammed Abubakar the state governor had vowed that perpetrators of the crime and their collaborators would be brought to book in line with the change agenda of the All Progressives Congress.