Adamawa stops salaries of over 2,000 suspected ghost teachers

The Adamawa State Government says it has stopped the salaries of over 2,000 workers who did not take part in the payroll verification and biometric data capture exercise commissioned by Governor Ahmadu Fintiri.

The state Commissioner for Finance, Ishaya Dabari; and Accountant General of the state, Kefas Tagwi, had on Friday denied that the non-payment of the affected civil servants had to do with the lien placed on accounts operated by the state government with some commercial banks.

Tagwi said, though there was a judgment debt amounting to over N600m against the state government which some aggrieved teachers, over 1,000 of whom were employed way back in 2012, secured at the National Industrial Court of Arbitration, the state government had appealed the judgment.

He explained that through some extraneous means, the workers approached another court, which placed a lien order on its accounts, noting that it was not a garnishee order as claimed. He added that it still did not stop the payment of workers’ salaries in March, because of the pending appeal.

Dabari, however, said the state government was shy of declaring the affected workers, who did not get their salaries in March, as ghost workers because of the governor’s magnanimity.

The commissioner said, “Governor Fintiri, who is promoting transparency and accountability in governance, commissioned the biometric data capture and payroll audit verification exercise for all civil servants in all the ministries, departments and agencies.

“But since the exercise is to be phased, the exercise began with the post-primary schools management board for teachers in secondary schools in the state. Initially, we had over 12,000 teachers, which is the number on our payroll.

“But after the verification, we were only able to verify a little above 9,000 teachers, which revealed that over 2,000 teachers were nowhere to be found. What we did in our wisdom was not to declare the workers as ghost workers. However, the salaries of affected workers who did not show up for screening and data capture were stopped.”

He added that the stoppage of the salaries of the affected workers had nothing to do with the purported garnishee order, but internal control measures to curb leakages.