ICPC uncovers official who ‘enrolled 14 family members’ on government payroll

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has uncovered fresh details of an alleged payroll fraud scheme in which government officials reportedly inserted relatives and other fictitious names into public payrolls — with one individual allegedly benefiting from as many as 13 salaries.

ICPC Chairman, Musa Adamu Aliyu (SAN), disclosed the findings in Abuja while delivering the keynote address at the 2026 Economic Confidential Lecture and National Spokespersons Award organised by Image Merchants Promotions Limited.

Aliyu described the investigation as a disturbing illustration of how weaknesses in government payroll systems can be exploited by individuals seeking to divert public funds.

According to him, investigators uncovered a case involving an official who allegedly enrolled 14 members of his family on the government payroll.

“We discovered that one person enrolled 14 members of his family. He lived in a religious hotel, a hotel at the public office, receiving salaries.”

The ICPC chairman said another official allegedly placed several relatives on the payroll and personally collected multiple salaries.

“Another individual allegedly enrolled his wife, daughter, son and other family members and received 13 salaries,” he said.

Nearly 1,000 names flagged

The revelations form part of a wider ICPC investigation into suspected ghost workers and payroll manipulation across federal government institutions.

The commission has separately reported uncovering 908 suspected ghost workers across at least 50 federal ministries, departments and agencies, with about ₦942 million traced to allegedly fraudulent salary payments. The Nigeria Police Force accounted for the largest number, with 570 names flagged.

The ICPC subsequently secured a final forfeiture order for ₦941,994,079.86 linked to the suspected payroll fraud. The Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the money forfeited permanently to the Federal Government after the commission established that the funds were reasonably suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activity.

Aliyu said the commission had also published the names of about 900 suspected ghost workers and challenged those listed to demonstrate that they were legitimate government employees.

“We now secured the income of about 900 ghost workers, whose names we published in papers,” he said.

Investigation lasted one year

According to the ICPC chairman, the exercise was not a short-term payroll audit but an extensive investigation into how fictitious or unauthorised names entered government salary systems and how the resulting payments were allegedly diverted.

“We spent one year, one single year, on ghost workers,” Aliyu said.

The commission's investigation reportedly began after irregularities were detected in pension payments and subsequently expanded into government payroll systems. Investigators found suspected ghost workers spread across major federal institutions, including the Police, National Water Resources Authority, Ministries of Works, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Power, Health and Industry, Trade and Investment.

The case has also exposed the uncomfortable irony of payroll fraud occurring within IPPIS, a system designed in part to strengthen government payroll management and eliminate ghost workers.

The ICPC's recent recovery is not the commission's first major intervention against fictitious employees. In 2024, Aliyu disclosed that the agency had recovered more than ₦20 billion linked to fraudulent ghost-worker pension schemes.

The latest investigation therefore goes beyond the discovery of names on a payroll. It raises questions about who authorised the entries, how salaries were approved and transferred, and what safeguards failed to detect the irregularities earlier.

For now, the individuals implicated in the latest allegations remain subjects of investigation. But the scale of the findings — from officials allegedly putting entire family networks on government payrolls to hundreds of suspected fictitious workers across federal institutions — underscores the continuing challenge of protecting Nigeria's public wage bill from organised manipulation.