The Osun State Government has firmly rejected claims of a ₦13 billion payroll fraud, accusing the hired consultant, Sally Tibbot Consulting Limited, of deliberately inflating figures to secure a larger commission.
In a recent statement, the state's Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, described the allegations as misleading and motivated by financial self-interest.
The consultant had previously claimed that a forensic audit and payroll verification exercise—covering the period from 2018 to November 2023 identified around 15,000 "ghost workers," including approximately 8,448 active workers and 6,713 retirees who could not be verified.
This, they alleged, resulted in fraudulent annual payments totaling about ₦13 billion (with monthly figures around ₦1.14 billion).However, the Osun government conducted its own re-verification following receipt of the audit report.
Officials stated that more than two-thirds of the individuals flagged as ghost workers were confirmed as legitimate, with full identification and documentation. Specifically:Out of the 8,448 workers declared unseen, 8,015 were verified as active staff.Out of the 6,713 retirees, 5,830 were confirmed legitimate.
This left fewer than 1,000 individuals unreachable or unverified, significantly reducing the scale of any alleged fraud.
The government emphasized that Governor Ademola Adeleke had initially welcomed the audit to address inherited payroll issues from the previous administration and would support involvement from anti-corruption agencies like the EFCC and ICPC to independently investigate any genuine ghost workers.
Alimi noted that the governor "will be more than elated" if real discrepancies are proven, as the original intent was to clean up the payroll system.
The state accused Sally Tibbot of padding the report allegedly inflating the ghost worker count to 15,000 to qualify for a commission of around ₦2 billion, tied to projected savings.
After the government's review, the consultant's potential payment dropped sharply to approximately ₦47 million.
The administration has since abandoned the consultant's proposed payroll system replacement and shifted to its own homegrown reforms. Efforts to obtain a response from the consultant's CEO, Sa’adat Bakrin-Ottun, were unsuccessful according to reports.
