Governors jittery over probe of bailout fund – ICPC

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Governors jittery over probe of bailout fund – ICPC

Chairman, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Mr Ekpo Nta, said most state governors were jittery over investigations into the spending of bailout funds.

The ICPC boss said this in Bauchi on Monday in his speech at the opening of Bauchi State Anti-Corruption Summit, titled “Transparency and Accountability: A Panacea to Good Governance and Sustainable Development.”

“Most of the governors thought I was going to find out how the bail funds were utilized, not knowing that the commission had different intention,” Nta said.

“We witnessed a situation where most of the states were bedeviled with ghost workers syndrome in spite that their resources could pay workers’ salaries.

“Staff verification could not be authentic as most agencies alerted both their authentic and fake staff to appear during such exercises”, he added.

He said that the commission, therefore, had to fall back on Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), and matched same with staff nominal list and that a lot of malpractices were discovered.

“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.

“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,” Nta said.

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.