ASUBEB Moves Against ‘Ghost’ Workers

Chairman of Abia State Universal Basic Education Board (ASUBEB), Chief Mike Onyebuchi, says the board is poised to stamp out corruption in its financial system by weeding out ghost workers.

Onyebuchi in an interview with The Tide in Umuahia said the board hopes to achieve this by carrying out staff audit in all primary schools in the state as well as computerize its payment system.

He said the audit exercise would commence this week while the computerisation of the payment system would follow after the staff audit exercise. According to him, these measures would help sanitise the system and end alleged sharp practices.

Abia is believed to be losing millions of naira monthly to “ghost” workers in the primary school system allegedly created by some unscrupulous Secretaries of the Local Government Education Authorities (LGEA) in the state.

It is being alleged that LGEA secretaries pad staff list of various schools and, in some cases, create non-existent schools with full compliment of staff through which they siphon public funds. These fraudulent practices have increased the wage bill of teachers in many local governments which are left with paltry funds after teachers salaries have been deducted from their allocations from the Federation Accounts.

Also, alleged sharp practices in the system prompted the Nigerian Union of Teachers in Abia to run to ASUBEB with a suggestion that each school be allowed to raise its vouchers for their salaries and submit same to the board for vetting and payment.

In response, ASUBEB said the anomaly would be rectified through staff audit and computerisation of the board’s payment system.

“The union suggested that vouchers should be raised by the various schools and brought in for vetting and for payment. The idea had come before I came on board. But I said what we are going to do is to computerise our pay system and we are working towards that now.”

“In fact the first step towards this will take off next week  (this week) or there about. We are going for proper  personnel audit in all the 17 local Government areas in the state and when we are through with that, it will now help us in the next step we want to take, that is establishing computerised payment system in order to stop all forms of fraud in the system,” the ASUBEB boss said.

Wife of Bayelsa State Governor, Mrs. Alanyingi Sylva, (left) exchanging pleasantries with the wife of Abia State Governor, Mrs. T.A. Orji, at an event in Owerri, Imo State.