Former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has revealed how the Federal Government used technology to eliminate large-scale payroll fraud, uncovering 45,000 “ghost workers” through the integration of the Bank Verification Number (BVN).
Speaking at the Citadel School of Government Dialogue series in Lagos, Adeosun explained that prior to the reform, the federal payroll was the government’s largest expenditure and was plagued by inefficiencies that earlier biometric efforts failed to resolve.
She noted that previous attempts to sanitise the payroll using biometric systems often stalled due to resistance from paramilitary institutions such as the Police and Army, which were reluctant to adopt centralised processes.
To overcome this, her team leveraged the existing BVN database instead of introducing a new biometric system.
“The payroll was our biggest cost,” Adeosun said. “Previous biometric efforts had stalled because paramilitary groups refused to cooperate. We bypassed this by using BVN data. We ran the federal payroll against the BVN database, and the result was staggering: we found 45,000 ‘ghost workers.’”
Clarifying the nature of the fraud, she explained that the term “ghost worker” often concealed simpler issues tied to weak systems and individual exploitation rather than highly organised networks.
“In many cases, it wasn’t a ‘ghost,’ but one person’s BVN linked to multiple salaries,” she said. “It wasn’t always a cartel. Sometimes it was inefficiency—people who had died or transferred but were still receiving salaries.”