Over three thousand civil servants in Niger state have been discovered to have joined the service with forged certificates.
The committee set up by the state government to look into the over blotted salary bills of the state disclosed this to journalists at the government house in Minna.
Chairman of the committee and commissioner of works, Ibrahim Panti also disclosed that three hundred and forty other civil servants are either dead or retired but are still receiving salaries.
He said the head-of-service of the state forwarded the names of 26,387 civil servants to the committee, but only 25,861 of them registered on the screening portal.
Panti further said 1,789 civil servants did not complete the screening process due to credential problems among others, while 773 civil servants among those who registered absented themselves from the screening exercise.
According to him, the committee is still looking into the issues of some of the civil servants who may have a genuine reason for being absent.
“The committee wishes to categorically report that the exercise provided very salient information which has led to the generation of data as follows:
1. Unique staff records comprising identity, personal, employment, and emolument data for each screened staff;
2. Matched and unique fingerprints images of every screened staff;
3. Staff passport size-picture of every screened staff;
4. Electronic compy of employees’ credentials and emolument documents for every screened staff;
5. Data on staff with valid and invalid educational and professional certifications;
6. Data on terminated staff compromising the deceased and retirees;
7. Data about staff impersonation;
8. Authenticated and downsized payroll data from 26,387 submitted by the head of service to about 21,000 screened;
9. A total number of 169 screened staff were discovered missing from the september, 2020 payment schedule submitted by the office of the head of service;
Comprehensive ready data for possible human management development for government stakeholders’ use.
These data would henceforth serve as the fulcrum for easy identification of each employee going forward and is hereby presented for the restructuring of the state civil service,” Mr Panti said.
