71,135 ghost pensioners on FG’s pay roll – Sali

Jonathan

ABUJA – The House of Representatives Committee on Pension, yesterday, heard that over 71,135 ghost pensioners were on the pay roll of Federal Government which cost the government over N28 billion annually. The Head of Service of the Federation, Alhaji Ibrahim Sali, told the committee, yesterday, that the report of the pension reform task force revealed that there were several scams going on in pension service. He said, by last month, the payroll indicated that there were 113,089 pensioners on payroll of the office of the Head of Service of the Federation with a total monthly pension of N1,634,166,812.02 as against previous payment of N3.3 billion monthly before the report. He said before the exercise, under-aged persons were paid pension, many names and account numbers were duplicated, many pensioners provided falsified documents for verification and that with the weeding of over 70,000 fake/ghost pensioners, “the Federal Government will make an annual saving of about N28 billion. He said that investigation also revealed that many problems associated with the administration of pension are human-related and traceable to staff of the Pension Office in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, among others. Chairman of the committee, Mr. Ibrahim Kamba, had described the reported cases of fraud in the Pension Office as worrisome.