Ekpo Nta, chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission (ICPC), on Monday said most governors were against the probe of the bailout funds given to them by the federal government.
Nta said this in Bauchi during an anti-corruption summit, which had as its theme: ‘Transparency and Accountability: A Panacea to Good Governance and Sustainable Development’.
“Most of the governors thought I was going to find out how the bailout funds were utilised, not knowing that the commission had different intention,” he said.
“We witnessed a situation where most of the states were bedeviled with ghost workers syndrome despite that their resources could pay workers’ salaries.
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“Staff verification could not be authentic as most agencies alerted both their authentic and fake staff to appear during such exercises.”
He spoke of how the commission used bank verification numbers (BVN) to uncover “a lot of malpractices in the civil service of some states”.
“Some of the workers were discovered to be receiving double and even triple salaries, with two or four accounts, different names in different banks and one BVN,” he said.
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“They draw salaries from all the accounts on monthly bases, as such I urge all agencies to address the issue of ghost workers with dispatch.”
He called on members of the national assembly to monitor projects executed by the executive to ensure that such projects tallied with funds appropriated in the budget.
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