Former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has revealed how the Federal Government uncovered 45,000 “ghost workers” by integrating the Bank Verification Number (BVN) into its payroll system.
Speaking at the Citadel School of Government Dialogue series in Lagos, Adeosun said the reform targeted the federal payroll, which she described as the government’s largest expenditure and one long affected by inefficiencies.
She explained that earlier efforts to clean up the payroll through biometric systems were largely unsuccessful, as some paramilitary institutions, including the police and army, resisted adopting centralised processes.
According to her, the breakthrough came when her team decided to leverage the existing BVN database rather than introduce a new biometric system.
“The payroll was our biggest cost,” she said. “Previous biometric efforts had stalled because paramilitary groups refused to cooperate. We bypassed this by using BVN data. We ran the federal payroll against the BVN database, and the result was staggering: we found 45,000 ‘ghost workers.’”
Adeosun clarified that the fraud was not always the result of organised criminal networks but often stemmed from systemic weaknesses and individual exploitation.
“In many cases, it wasn’t a ‘ghost,’ but one person’s BVN linked to multiple salaries,” she noted. “It wasn’t always a cartel. Sometimes it was inefficiency—people who had died or transferred but were still receiving salaries.”