{"id":844,"date":"2026-02-20T15:34:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/?p=844"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:34:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:34:06","slug":"osun-state-rejects-n13bn-payroll-fraud-allegation-accuses-consultant-of-figure-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/osun-state-rejects-n13bn-payroll-fraud-allegation-accuses-consultant-of-figure-inflation\/","title":{"rendered":"Osun State Rejects N13bn Payroll Fraud Allegation, Accuses Consultant of Figure Inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Osun State Government has dismissed allegations of a N13 billion payroll fraud levelled against it by auditing firm Sally Tibbot Limited, accusing the consultant of inflating figures to claim a N2 billion commission.<\/span><\/h3>\n

In a statement issued on Friday in Osogbo, the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, said verification of the consultant\u2019s report showed that more than two-thirds of those declared as \u201cghost workers\u201d were legitimate staff with proper identification and documentation.<\/p>\n

The Chief Executive Officer of Sally Tibbot Limited, Sa\u2019adat Bakrin-Ottun, had alleged during a television interview that the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke failed to implement the outcome of a staff audit exercise which reportedly uncovered payroll irregularities.<\/p>\n

Responding, Alimi said the consultant was engaged to sanitise a payroll system inherited from the previous administration but ended up misclassifying active workers and retirees as ghost employees.<\/p>\n

According to the government, a review committee found that out of 8,448 workers listed as \u201cunseen,\u201d 8,015 were verified as active staff, while 433 could not be reached. Similarly, of the 6,713 retirees labelled ghost pensioners, 5,830 were confirmed genuine, leaving 883 unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

Alimi alleged that the consultant inflated the total number of purported ghost workers to 15,000 in order to justify a commission claim of about N2 billion. He said the recalculated figure of fewer than 1,000 unverifiable names reduced the consultant\u2019s entitlement to about N47 million.<\/p>\n

The commissioner added that the government would welcome investigations by anti-corruption agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, stressing that the governor had nothing to hide.<\/p>\n

He further explained that concerns over the audit deepened when it was discovered that the payroll replacement system proposed by the consultant had not been tested elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The state subsequently adopted a homegrown payroll reform approach.<\/p>\n

Efforts to obtain a reaction from Bakrin-Ottun were unsuccessful as calls and messages sent to her were not returned as of the time of filing this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Osun State Government has dismissed allegations of a N13 billion payroll fraud levelled against it by auditing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-n13bn-payroll-fraud-allegation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa.jpg",900,660,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa-300x220.jpg",300,220,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa-768x563.jpg",640,469,true],"large":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa.jpg",640,469,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa.jpg",900,660,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa.jpg",900,660,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Adeleke-big-mic-yapa-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["Publisher"]},"category_info":"Politics<\/a>","tag_info":"Politics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facthubafrica.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}