Police top list as ICPC uncovers 908 suspected ghost workers in

THE  Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said it has uncovered 908 suspected ghost workers across at least 50 federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), with the Nigeria Police Force recording the highest number.

The ICPC Chairman, Musa Adamu Aliyu, disclosed this while providing an update on the commission’s ongoing investigation into payroll fraud in federal institutions, according to a BBC Pidgin report.

Aliyu said the payroll verification exercise led to the recovery of about N942 million allegedly paid as fraudulent salaries.

According to the ICPC chairman, investigators also uncovered a case in which a suspect allegedly enrolled his wife, son and mother-in-law on the government payroll while collecting the salaries of 12 other workers.

The report noted that the Nigeria Police Force accounted for the highest number of suspected ghost workers, with 570 names flagged during the exercise.

“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 ranked next with 80 suspected ghost workers, followed by the Federal Ministry of Works with 56.

Aliyu said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had 24 suspected ghost workers, while the Ministry of Defence recorded 19.

The Federal Ministry of Electricity and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment each had 17 suspected ghost workers, while the Federal Ministry of Health recorded 15.

The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation was also listed with 12 suspected ghost workers.

The ICPC further named the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Federal Ministry of Interior among the affected institutions but did not disclose the number of suspected ghost workers identified in the two agencies.

Aliyu said the investigation, which began in 2024, was ongoing as the commission continues efforts to sanitise the federal payroll system and recover public funds allegedly lost to salary fraud.

In Nigeria, ‘ghost workers’ are people who appear on a government or organisational payroll but do not actually work there. They are essentially fictitious employees whose names and details, sometimes even bank accounts, are inserted into salary records so that someone else can collect their wages. 

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The latest disclosure comes months after The ICIR exclusively reported that the commission was investigating an alleged payroll fraud scheme within the Nigeria Police Force after a Katsina-based whistleblower, Mubarak Bello, exposed the fraud and was being hounded by the police.

The ICIR investigation revealed that Bello had petitioned the ICPC, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Police Service Commission (PSC), and the Attorney-General of the Federation over an alleged ghost-worker scheme operating within the Katsina State Police Command.

Bello, who operated a business centre inside the Katsina police headquarters for over a decade, alleged that senior police finance officers recruited him to forge employment records, create fake personnel files, open bank accounts and facilitate the enrolment of non-existent officers into the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

He claimed that after refusing to continue participating in the scheme and reporting it to anti-corruption agencies, he was subjected to intimidation, arrests and physical attacks.

Senior ICPC officials familiar with Bello’s petition disclosed that the commission found substance in parts of the allegations after matching some of the payroll numbers he provided with suspicious IPPIS entries that had already been flagged during a separate ghost-worker investigation.

The officials also said the investigation stalled after police authorities allegedly failed to release officers invited for questioning despite repeated requests by the anti-graft agency.

Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M