The Chief Executive Officer of Sally Tibbox Consulting, Saadat Ottun, has revealed that her firm uncovered thousands of ghost workers and significant payroll irregularities during a staff audit for the Osun State Government. Ottun disclosed the figures during an interview on Channels Television on Thursday, February 19, 2026.

Responding to questions on the scale of the alleged fraud, she said, “So, the state submitted 37,456 workers. At the end of the day they went on to submit another a few of them more, making 39,456.” She continued, “Of this 39,456 8,452 did not show up and the amount of money being used to pay those is 1,143,000 every month and that amounts to over 13.716 billion a year.”

Ottun further addressed discrepancies in the pension payroll. “Also, the pensioners when we asked how many there were for pensioners, they said that they were over 17,000 pensioners but when we did the full audit of all the pensioners both home and abroad, because they said some were in the diaspora and what have you and we used, I mean communication has really you know, advanced and we used Zoom to call the ones that were supposedly abroad and we found out that of the figures submitted, 5,831 were non-existent,” she said.

She noted that the verification process lasted 12 months and covered all parts of the state. “There’s nowhere within Osun State, where we were working in Oshogbo there, there’s nowhere in that state, no corner in that state that would take a year between that corner and coming to Oshogbo to do whatever it is you wanted to do which took only five minutes,” Ottun stated.

The audit, she said, covered workers and pensioners across state-owned institutions, local governments, and the state government.

Ottun also alleged cases of multiple salary payments into single bank accounts. “In a situation where you’re getting paid electronically through the banks but you have one single account, one single account, taking 962 salaries per month, one single account linked to only one BVN and one name and one bank account, taking 962,” she said.

She added, “In fact there was a particular account that had 5,615 salaries going into it every month.”

Ottun questioned internal oversight mechanisms, stating, “The Ministry of Finance is there, they should be the ones superintending on payroll, the Office of the Accountant General is there, the Office of the Human Resources is there. How would you look at people getting paid, you know, some get double.