Three-year-olds among ghost workers in Adamawa

The Adamawa State government has said it found people aged three to 10 on its payroll.

The state government said this in Yola on Monday while denying reports that it was axing workers employed by the previous administration.

The state government explained that the recent review of its payroll, which resulted in the discovery of 12,000 ghost workers did not amount to the mass sack of workers employed by his predecessor.

“This is totally false. However, if reference is made to the outcome of the local government verification exercise then it is necessary to observe that certain anomalies were quite manifest and require remedies which were appropriately recommended, ” the Commissioner for Information, Ahmed Sajoh, said.

“No government will fold its arms and have people of ages from three years to 10 years on their payroll or nine people in one family on the payroll while only one person is working.”

The government had recently explained that the audit, which led to the discovery of the ghost workers, was influenced by Governor Mohammed Jibrilla’s policy of entrenching transparency as a “cornerstone of the administration”.