Gross Fraud in Zamfara …As One-Month Old Baby Receives Salary

Huhuonline.com can report that investigations into the Zamfara state government's payroll has revealed that government officials allegedly paid salaries to a one-month old baby and alleged holder of diploma.

The discovery was made as a result of the recent probe to fish out ghost employees from the over bloated workforce in the state and local governments, just as efforts are in top gear to make the perpetrators refund the siphoned funds and face prosecution for misappropriating public funds.

The Zamfara state Commissioner for Justice, Garba Gajam, who made the disclosure said that 'In the on-going verification exercise of the payrolls in the state, we discovered that a month-old baby was among the employees of one local government who is paid a salary.

'What is even more astonishing is that it was indicated in the payroll that the infant holds an ordinary national diploma. This discovery is a widespread trend in the local government service where senior officials stuff payrolls with the names of their wives and children'.

Garba Gajam, who said 'We have been receiving amazing revelations which point to the rot and abysmal level of corruption at the local government level' also revealed that in August the name of a five-month-old baby was also found on the payroll of another local municipality, which motivated the probe into the financial records at the third tier of government in the state.

Meanwhile, despite the assurances from the state government that the perpetrators of the act would be made to refund the stolen funds and face prosecution for misappropriation of public funds, Huhuonline.com sources in Zamfara state said that nobody has been arrested or tried for corruption in a sharia court in the state since the re-introduction of the penal code in 1999.