Malam Lawal Maikano, Commissioner for Finance, Niger said the ministry recently discovered about 200 fake names on the state government’s payroll.
He disclosed this in an interview with newsmen shortly after the ministry’s 2024 budget defence in Minna on Friday.
Maikano said the discovery was as a result of technology deployed by the state government to checkmate the state civil service.
” Gov. Umaru Bago administration is determined to ensure that all loopholes and leakages are blocked.
“By doing that, we are deploying technology to checkmate these processes, we started in one or two months that we came.
“We have knocked off about 100 to 200 names from the payroll that never existed.
“If they truly exist, we will have been having alot of complaints that they are staff of this place and have not been paid salaries,” he said.
He said that the state employees were 25,000 and the state government was spending N2.5 billion on the payment of salaries monthly.
He, however, said that the 2024 budget of N613 billion would be financed from loan, Federal allocation, revenue generation and other sources.