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Former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has revealed how the Federal Government harnessed technology to curb large-scale payroll fraud, identifying 45,000 “ghost workers” through the integration of the Bank Verification Number (BVN).
Speaking at the Citadel School of Government Dialogue Series in Lagos, Adeosun said that prior to the reform, the federal payroll was the government’s largest expenditure and had long suffered from inefficiencies that earlier biometric efforts failed to resolve. She noted that previous attempts to clean up the payroll using biometric systems often stalled due to resistance from paramilitary institutions such as the Police and Army, which were reluctant to adopt centralised processes.
“To overcome this, we leveraged the existing BVN database instead of introducing a new biometric system,” Adeosun explained. “The payroll was our biggest cost. 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.’”
Clarifying the nature of the fraud, she emphasized that the term “ghost worker” often masked simpler issues arising from weak systems and individual exploitation rather than sophisticated criminal networks.
“In many cases, it wasn’t a ‘ghost,’ but one person’s BVN linked to multiple salaries,” she said. “It wasn’t always a cartel. Sometimes it was inefficiency—people who had died or transferred but were still receiving salaries.”
