Cross River State government may have fished out over 3,000 ghost workers in the state civil service. Faced with serious financial challenges resulting from accumulated debts, huge wage bills, deductions from the Federation Account to service debts, the state governor, Bassey Otu, engaged a personnel audit firm to look into the actual staff strength of the state civil service and the local councils.

So far, the official report of the personnel audit is not out yet, but according to top sources, findings show that the number is on the high side.

A source said: “From the state civil service alone, I think we may have about 3,000 ghost workers. The figure may increase or reduce by the time that of the local councils are added, and inputs from labour.”

It was learnt that for the meantime, the audit firm has completed documentation and physical verification in the civil service. It has moved to the local councils for physical capturing.

Recall that in a press briefing to mark his 100 days in office, Otu had raised an alarm over the huge wage bill from the state civil service. He said: “We discovered that a whole lot are retiring, but the salary bill keeps on increasing. There is a need to do a proper audit to ascertain the exact number so that some of the politicians, who have the qualifications, can be taken as civil servants, and the rest can be appointed.

“I think it is only then that we would be able to strike a balance and we have gone very far with that.”

Although the governor did not give figures of suspected ghost workers, only suggested that the number was outrageous, he assured that not too long from then, he would be taking that particular exercise to a very logical conclusion.

He had expressed concerns with the low finances of the state, saying that huge debt was a major factor, as the state recorded deficit allocation from the Federation Account in his first two months in office.

Otu said: “We have succeeded in restructuring our debt, because that was the first issue that confronted us as a government, which almost threw us to the ground. That was judgement debts, and the one that was most threatening was the (Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) debt.”

“By the time we finished discussions with the Federal Government, it became clear that we are not going to have anything for a very long time.

“Suffice it to say that since I took office in May, we had a negative ₦1.9 billion deficit after allocation in June, and in the second month we had about ₦480 million deficit.”