orensic audit and payroll validation exercise uncovered 8,452 ghost workers allegedly paid over N13.7bn annually by the Osun State Government<\/a>.\n<\/p>\nReacting to the development, the Osun State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, in a statement obtained in Osogbo, on Saturday, dismissed the allegations and accused the consultant of wrongly declaring legitimate workers as ghost workers.\n<\/p>\n
Explaining how the state government is responding to the claims, Alimi said the reaction followed reports that the consultant allegedly declared as ghost workers the State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, his deputy, Kola Adewusi, the Secretary to the State Government, the Vice Chancellor of Osun State University, Prof. Clement Adebooye, and several other public servants.<\/p>\n
He added that the government was responding through an official statement to clarify the matter, reject the allegations, and support affected workers who, he said, were preparing to seek legal redress over what they described as defamation.\n<\/p>\n
Alimi said, \u201cThe workers affected included the Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University, staff of polytechnics, several top professors, Deans, provosts among others,\u201d adding that \u201cMore than ten agencies alongside several tertiary institutions were not covered and workers in those agencies were declared ghost workers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The statement further read, \u201cOsun public servants who were declared ghost workers by Sally Tibbot Limited have resolved to drag the company and the lead consultant to court for soiling and defaming their careers of several decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn multiple reach out to the state government, the workers across various agencies decried the defamation and character assassination the consultant perpetrated by declaring them as ghost workers, vowing to seek redress in court of law.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workers were furious that the company is still referring to them as ghost workers after they had shown up for verification and had been duly captured and had even expressed readiness to show themselves to the company as genuine workers with unblemished records of service with the state government.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The commissioner further stated that, \u201cIt is also on record that the consultant declared the state governor, the deputy governor, the Secretary to the state government and more than two thirds of political appointees in the state as ghost workers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Debunking allegations of a cover-up, Alimi described the Lagos press briefing by the firm as \u201ca subtle blackmail to force a fraudulent staff audit report on the state,\u201d adding that a re-verification exercise conducted by the government \u201cshockingly revealed extensive inflation of the supposed number of ghost workers and which showed that those the company claimed were ghost workers were legitimate employees of the state government.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He added that while the government remained committed to cleaning up the state payroll, \u201cit can not in good conscience remove legitimate state government employees from the payroll and cannot submit to an audit report that has the potential to further defraud the state government.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Recall that The PUNCH had earlier reported in April 2025<\/a>, in an exclusive story titled \u201cAudit report uncovers over 500 ghost workers in Osun,\u201d that a 2023 audit exercise had generated tension across the state, a claim later rejected by the state chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Osun State Government has reacted to allegations by a forensic audit firm, Sally Tibbot Consulting Limited, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[10499,10500,10501,10502,10503,122,10504,4441,10505,10506,10507],"class_list":{"0":"post-16213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-ademola-adeleke","9":"tag-defamation","10":"tag-forensic-audit","11":"tag-ghost-workers","12":"tag-kolapo-alimi","13":"tag-nigeria","14":"tag-nigerian-labour-congress","15":"tag-osun-state","16":"tag-payroll-audit","17":"tag-public-service","18":"tag-sally-tibbot-consulting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}