Cross River Moves To Purge Ghost Workers After Validating 52,330 Staff, Pensioners

The Cross River Government has moved to purge ghost workers from its payroll after validating 52,330 out of 61,167 registered workers and pensioners in its ongoing personnel audit.

The State Head of Service, Mr. Orok Okon, disclosed this yesterday while reacting on the issue during a telephone conversation.

He said that the state has about 41,000 civil servants with local government staff, while more than 20,000 are pensioners. He stressed that a meeting of the State-Wide Personnel Audit Verification Committee was recently concluded to review progress and address challenges affecting the exercise, as part of efforts to clean up the payroll.

An executive summary report showed that 8,837 profiles remained outstanding, comprising 6,920 individuals yet to begin verification and 1,917 whose verification was still in progress.

 “The report attributed the outstanding cases to biometric and network challenges, death cases, suspected ghost workers, and service exits,” Okon said.

He stressed that the report also identified 469 cases requiring further attention by the committee responsible for reviewing and reconciling the audit findings.

He averred that a circular would be issued to provide a timetable for staff and pensioners to appear for physical verification, while a dedicated online link would be provided for pensioners living outside Nigeria to complete the process remotely.

The Head of Service stressed that all registered individuals must undergo proper status verification before any names were removed from the payroll. He said the exercise is aimed at strengthening personnel data management, promoting accountability, and improving the credibility of the state’s payroll system.

The report recommended targeted information technology operations to resolve outstanding biometric challenges, update Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs), and correct name discrepancies. Okon called for sustained administrative follow-up to ensure that all outstanding records were resolved and every account either cleared or formally archived.

“The exercise covers personnel verification, data capture, approval, clock-in arrangements, onboarding and office-location setup across the state’s local government areas,” he concluded.