Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Gabriel Osa
OSOGBO, NIGERIA — A Lagos-based forensic audit and payroll verification company, SALLY TIBBOT Consulting Limited, has accused the Osun State Government of allowing the payment of salaries to 8,452 alleged “ghost workers”, claiming this has cost the state an estimated N13.7 billion annually in lost public funds. The firm’s explosive allegations have sparked a sharp public dispute with the state government, which has firmly denied the claims and offered its own contrasting findings.
At a press conference in Lagos, the audit firm’s legal counsel Jiti Ogunye presented the results of a comprehensive payroll audit it conducted on behalf of the Osun State Government under a contract awarded in April 2023. According to the firm’s findings, the state’s official payroll roll in January 2023 listed 37,456 active staff and 17,918 pensioners, with a combined monthly wage bill of N4.48 billion. However, after a forensic verification and validation exercise, the firm reported that only 29,004 of the staff had verifiable employment records, indicating that 8,452 workers were drawing salaries without any documented basis for employment. This adjustment, the firm said, reduced the monthly wage bill to N3.34 billion, yielding estimated potential savings of N1.14 billion monthly and N13.72 billion annually if ghost workers were removed from payroll.
The audit, which the firm said cost roughly N600 million and involved deployment of over 125 personnel across the state between June and December 2023, covered civil servants, local government workers, educators, state-owned institutions, and pensioners. The company’s management claimed the audit was one of the most extensive ever conducted in Osun and alleged it faced security threats and bureaucratic resistance during the exercise.
In addition to publicising the audit findings, Sally Tibbot Consulting said the Osun State Government has refused to implement the recommendations contained in the final report and has not paid the outstanding professional fees due under the terms of the contract, despite receiving and publicly acknowledging the report’s submission in June and July 2024. The firm described government attempts at what it called “re-verification” as a tactic to discredit its work rather than a legitimate review. It has called on Nigeria’s top anti-corruption agencies — the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) — to investigate the matter, warning that the alleged payroll irregularities reflect serious problems in public finance management and transparency.
However, the Osun State Government has publicly rejected the audit company’s claims, issuing a detailed rebuttal to what it described as misinformation and attempts at coercion. In an official statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, the government said its own re-verification exercise confirmed that the vast majority of the workers declared missing by the audit firm were, in fact, legitimate active employees or retirees. According to the state’s account, of the 8,448 workers the audit firm labelled “unseen,” officials were able to validate 8,015 as active workers and 5,830 retirees, leaving only about 1,316 individuals whose status could not be confirmed.
The government also disputed the methodology and scope of the auditing process, arguing that SALLY TIBBOT Consulting did not make sufficient efforts to ascertain why some workers were absent during verification, such as due to ill health or other legitimate reasons. It described the audit’s inflated ghost worker figure as “suspicious” and suggested that the firm’s consulting fees — which were reportedly linked to a percentage of payroll savings — reflected a greedy incentive rather than an objective audit outcome.
Officials defending the state’s position also maintained that any payment due to the consulting firm should be based on actual documented savings identified through rigorous verification, not the broader figures claimed in the original report. The government proposed an initial payment basis tied to the smaller subset of unverified individuals, although negotiations appear to have stalled.
The public dispute has attracted attention not only because of its potential financial implications but also due to broader concerns about governance, accountability, and economic management at the sub-national level. Payroll fraud — in which non-existent or improperly documented individuals remain on government salary lists — has long been recognised as a risk in public sector financial management, undermining efficiency and trust. The conflicting claims from the audit firm and the state government highlight challenges in ensuring transparent verification processes and in resolving disagreements over technical methodologies in audits of public records.
As of the latest available reports, no independent probe by anti-graft agencies has been officially announced, despite the consulting firm’s call for such action. Government officials have said that they are open to continued review and clarification, but insist on the legitimacy of their re-verification findings and their commitment to protecting legitimate workers’ interests.
The outcome of this dispute could have significant implications for public finance reforms and confidence in payroll systems across Nigeria’s federating units, particularly if it prompts greater scrutiny from federal authorities or independent auditors.
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