Zamfara Govt Discovers 119yr-Old on Payroll

Zamfara State Government has uncovered a 119-year-old (name witheld) on its payroll while trying to sanitise its wage bill.

Commissioner for Finance, Alhaji Rabiu Garba, disclosed at a news conference on Sunday in Gusau that the centenarian is surprisingly collecting salary.

Rabiu made this revelation while revealing the state government’s plans to sue about 200 persons illegally on its payroll and collecting monthly salary.

The commissioner also said he confronted the incumbent deputy governor of the state, Mr Mahdi Ali-Gusau, over allegations on social media that the deputy governor was collecting double salary.

According to him, the deputy governor denied the speculations and submitted self for further scrutiny to prove his innocence.

The commissioner, however, said on further investigations, it was discovered that “some directors of finance were involved in the racket of inflating the state workers’ monthly wage bill and pocketing the excess”.

He also revealed that the scam was more at the state Health Service Management Board (HSMB) where investigations showed that the suspended directors of finance were fraudulently selling out fake offers of employment at the cost of N250,000 to innocent job seekers.

He added that the state government was so far losing more than N216 million monthly to the racketeers.

Ali-Gusau lamented that “if utilised, the state government can employ an additional 8,000 persons and pay them salary” comfortably.
Garba declared that the state government would sue the 108 civil servants for allegedly receiving double salary in various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in the state.

He said that the affected workers were discovered during the ongoing investigation of workers’ salary issues by the state’s ministry of finance.

He said that the exercise, under the leadership of Governor Bello Matawalle, was not to witch-hunt anybody, but to ensure sanity in the civil service payroll in the state.