Certificate forgery: Government sacks 662 workers

The Oyo state head of service Mr Soji Eniade discloses that some workers in the state were dismissed after a thorough verification exercise

- Eniade says the exercise is a normal organisational check aimed at improving the quality of service in the state

- The head of service reveals that 2,021 fictitious names were identified on the state’s payroll with the utilisation of the Bank Verification Number (BVN)

The Oyo state government has fired 662 workers for certificate forgery and removed 2,021 fictitious names from its payroll.

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The state head of service Mr Soji Eniade (HoS), told newsmen in Ibadan that the dismissed workers were identified after a thorough verification exercise.

He said the 662 affected workers include 305 from the local government service, 152 from MDAs and 149 from the Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM).

Twenty-eight others are from parastatals, 26 from higher institutions of learning and two from the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB).

The head of service said the state executive council had, at its last meeting, discussed the need to restructure the civil and public service of the state in terms of quality and quantity.

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“In terms of quantity, we want to have the right size or figure of civil and public servants in the state institutions, and our intention is to have institutions without ghost workers,” he said.

Eniade said the state government had re-engaged the services of a consultant who had earlier and excellently performed the same exercise in 2008.

The head of service noted that the exercise was a normal organisational check aimed at improving the quality of service in the state.

“We cannot continue to allow the influx of people with fictitious certificates into the service of the state,” he said.

He however, said they had exempted the Primary School Certificate in the verification exercise.

“We only reckoned with West African Senior School Certificate (WASSCE), Ordinary National Diploma (OND), Higher National Diploma (HND), Degree certificates and other higher certificates,” he said.

He said 2,021 fictitious names were identified on the state’s payroll with the utilisation of the Bank Verification Number (BVN).

“Out of the 2,021 identified through the BVN, 1,432 are pensioners from the state, 84 pensioners from the local government, while 505 are from other sectors of the service,” he said.

The HoS said that the 2,021 fictitious names had been expunged from the payroll of the state.

Meanwhile, some youths in Ebonyi state enlisted for the federal government’s N-Power documentation exercise have protested against alleged extortion by organisers of the programme.

The N-Power is a federal government initiative to employ 200,000 unemployed graduates across the country and pay them a stipend of N30,000 monthly.

But the exercise was marred by protests on Monday, December 5, when youths from the 13 local government area of Ebonyi state enlisted for scheme alleged that organisers of the programme were extorting them.