Benue deploys Remita software to tame payroll fraud

Benue State Government has confirmed the deployment of a new payroll system into the state Civil service in the bid to check fraudulence practices on its payroll.

Mr David Olofu, State commissioner for Finance and Economic Planning, who confirmed this, revealed that the state has engage SystemSpecs’ Remita in managing the state’s salary payment and that this has really helped to get rid of fraud on the payroll.

It was gathered that the sum of N3.5billion salary fraud has recently been uncovered on the Benue State Civil Service payroll following a verification exercise to ascertain the over bloated wage of the state.

And since the deployment of the Remita software about 500 duplicate names and over 20 duplicate Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) were uncovered through Remita software.

Olofu said, “It is painful to me as commissioner for Finance to start something that I think will bring relief to us as a state.

“To me, it is important to look at what we have as against the solution we are presenting and to also look at the agreement and see if there is any shady deal. SystemSpecs did not come from heaven, they have been recommended,’’ he said.

He said that the Federal Government was presently using its platform, Remita for the payment of its workers’ salaries.

Olofu insisted that the payment of salaries needed a platform regardless of whether the payroll was prepared by civil servants or not.

“We must always use a platform for the payment of workers’ salaries, before this time, we were using the U-pay platform.

“When we came in, we discovered that salaries were paid through the platform but the system had many problems, which included duplication of names and we wanted to find out where the problems were coming from.