Inside Osun with 8,452 Govt-backed Ghost Workers

The findings from the forensic audit conducted by Sally Tibbot Consulting Limited into the Osun State payroll have sparked a major controversy between the firm and Governor Ademola Adeleke's administration. The audit, which was carried out between June 2022 and April 2023, aimed to sanitize the state’s civil service database.
According to the reports released in early January 2026, the key findings and subsequent government reactions include:

The Primary Findings of the Audit Firm was the discovery of Ghost Workers: The firm identified 8,452 ghost workers who were classified as fictitious or non-existent employees on the state's payroll.

These non-existent workers were allegedly siphoning approximately 1.14 billion Naira monthly, totaling an annual loss of 13.7 billion naira and 54.8 billion naira over the period of 4 years for the state.

So, as of January 2023, the firm found the payroll was set for 37,456 staff and 17,918 pensioners. After validation, they concluded the genuine workforce was only 29,004 staff, suggesting thousands of names were fraudulently inserted.

It is important to know that the audit covered the mainstream civil service, local governments, SUBEB, TESCOM, and all state-owned higher institutions.

However, the Osun State Government strongly rejected these figures, labeling the report of the same auditor it contracted as "fraudulent" and "inflated."

The state government's counter-findings claims there are Errors in Classification used by the contracted firm which prompted Internal Re-verification by the state government.

The government conducted its own re-validation exercise, which they claim proved that out of the 8,448 workers flagged, 8,015 were active workers.

The state government only acknowledged roughly 1,316 as truly "unseen" or "unreachable" ghost workers comprising 433 active workers and 883 retirees.


Looking at the binding agreement between the state government and the contracted firm, the government alleged that the firm's fees were tied to the amount of "savings" discovered, creating an incentive for the consultant to exaggerate the number of ghost workers to claim a higher commission, the audit contract itself reportedly cost 600 million naira.

Whatever, the intersection of systemic maladministration and financial opacity creates a precarious landscape for Osun State, a region fundamentally anchored in a civil service-driven economy.

When an administration is accused of arbitrary disengagements in vital sectors like healthcare and education without adequate replacement, it does more than just disrupt individual livelihoods; it destabilizes the very social infrastructure required for economic transition.

For a state that possesses vast agricultural potential and a vibrant youthful population, the diversion of billions of naira through "ghost workers"—especially when allegedly confirmed by the government’s own hired auditors—represents a catastrophic leakage of development capital.

This illicit siphoning of funds into private pockets effectively paralyzes the state's ability to transition from a consumerist, salary-dependent economy to a productive, industrialized one. The irony of a government reacting with hostility toward its own audit findings suggests a lack of political will for transparency, further eroding public trust and discouraging the foreign and local investment necessary to capitalize on Osun’s fertile land and industrious spirit.

Furthermore, the reported inflation of project costs and the patronage-based awarding of contracts to incompetent proxies suggest that even the increased federal allocations are being neutralized by systemic leakages. If the state's financial resources are being cannibalized from within, the dream of leveraging its youthful energy for a "real-time working economy" remains stagnant.

An independent, comprehensive audit of the administration's financial history since its inception would likely reveal the full depth of this fiscal hemorrhage, serving as a necessary, albeit painful, first step toward reclaiming the state’s fortune from the clutches of institutionalized graft.