A recent staff audit sanctioned by Governor Seyi Makinde, conducted on Oyo civil service workers, has uncovered several scores of issues with 341 of the civil servants forced to resign.

The government said it uncovered 41 employees classified as ‘no show,’ a euphemism for ghost workers.

Taiwo Adisa, Mr Makinde’s chief press secretary, in a statement issued on Wednesday in Ibadan, said the discovery consultants engaged by the state to verify the workforce made the discovery.

According to the statement, the Implementation Committee of the Oyo State 2019/2020 Civil/Public Servants Audit and Payroll Re-engineering/Validation Exercise confirmed the ghost workers.

The consultants also indicted 602 officers and recommended removing the workers from the state’s payroll, but the committee affirmed 41 ghost workers.

“The consultants cleared 40 others of any infraction; uncovered 10 deaths, 170 systematic retirements and affirmed the option of voluntary retirement by 341 others, with irregular records of service.

“The implementation committee had examined the report submitted by the consultants and also interacted with the affected officers before finalizing the implementation model,” explained the statement.

In 2019, the Oyo government engaged Sally Tilbot Consulting was 2019 to undertake employees and pensioners’ verification/validation and payroll re-engineering tagged ‘2019/2020 Staff Audit.’

“Following a series of reconciliations, the report of the consultants was received by the government on April 30, after which an implementation committee was put in place to fashion out the final implementation model.

“The committee recommended that an administrative investigation be undertaken by the government to determine where the salaries of the ‘No Show’ officers had been going, the report said,” Mr Adisa added in the statement.

According to him, 341 who opted for voluntary retirement, 290 officers had turned in their voluntary retirement letters.

However, the committee recommended that the government accept the retirement of the 341 officers with irregular records of service.