The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has stated that it recovered over N20 billion in pension deductions linked to ghost workers in 2024.
The chairman of ICPC, Musa Aliyu, said this on Wednesday in Abuja at a breakfast meeting with some members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
Mr Aliyu said that the commission also arrested some people who specialised in inserting the names of their cronies into the federal government payroll.
According to him, while deductions for workers’ pensions are remitted to Pension Fund Administrators, the same cannot be said for ghost workers’ pensions.
“Any deduction made on ghost workers cannot go to any Pension Fund Administrator.
”It will be hanging, so that was the N20 billion recovered.
“We have been able to track and recover this amount of money and we also identified people that are inserting ghost workers in the system.
“We even discovered that somebody put his wife, his son and his inlaw in the payroll.
”He is a 15-year-old boy. We arrested him.
“These are some of the challenges that we are trying to see that we tackle.
”We don’t want to allow this to happen again,” he said
The chairman further revealed that the commission succeeded in blocking about N50 billion from being diverted by some public officers in 2023.
While seeking the support of the media in achieving the commission’s mandate, he said that the anti-graft agency had put in place strategies to fight corruption.
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