About 268 ghost workers have been discovered on the payroll of Kogi State Judiciary.
This was part of the discoveries by Kogi High Court’s Council of Judges’ subcommittee on Repositioning and Supervising the Directorate of Personnel Management of the court.
Chairman of the probe panel, Justice Mohammed Etsu Umar, disclosed this while presenting the report of the staff verification committee to the Acting Chief Judge (CJ), Justice Josiah Joe Majebi at the judiciary headquarters in Lokoja.
The committee recommended the termination of all ‘illegal’ appointments into the services of Kogi state judiciary, between January, 2021 and June, 2022.
The committee also uncovered 706 illegally recruited staff on the payroll of the state judiciary.
According to Justice Umar, the recruitment malpractice has led to ‘astronomical’ increase in personnel emoluments, representing 40 per cent increase in personnel cost.
“After a careful check of the names of newly employed staff from January 2021 to June 2022, the staff disposition list and payroll, it was discovered that some of the names on the payroll could not be found on the staff disposition list of the courts and other departments.
“Therefore, it is an indication that though their names are on the pay roll but they do not have duty stations and do not work anywhere in the Inspectorate offices.
“We discovered that we have about 40% increase of seven hundred and six (706) staff within the period under review.
“With the discovery of this astronomical rise in our number of staff within this period, we decided to examine the rise by juxtaposing it with the finances and infrastructure of the judiciary with a view to its sustainability and there were names found on the pay roll but not found in the staff register.”
“This contains thirteen names which added to the 255 gives us 268 non-existing staff on the pay roll but are not traceable to any duty station,” the committee chairman said.
Responding, the Acting Chief Judge of Kogi State, Hon. Justice Josiah Joe Majebi, pledged to implement the recommendations of the committee without delay.
