Monumental scandal: Dogara exposes N400 billion fraud in Bauchi

Even in Bauchi, the coming elections is throwing the financially bizzare, as Speaker of the House of Representatives,  Hon Yakubu Dogara,  flashed documents showing Bauchi State government has perpetrated mind-boggling fraud and theft reaching N400 billion in just three and half year.
In fact, a measure of “voodoo” is involved as one of 1,200 ghost workers that came on the government pay-roll, Bappale Adamu, was said to have been born in 1899, which is 120 years ago and started work with the Bauchi state government on July 24, 2015  and will retire from the service  in 2023.
And Dogara has challenged his Governor to consider a day in court if he thinks he has lied against him.
As a lawyer, he says, he is versed in law and would not level false allegations against anyone if he does not have evidence.
In Dass, headquarters of Dass local government area on Friday, Dogara showed thecrowd of his constituents showing how thousands of non-existent people were said to have been employed in 2015 shortly after Governor Abubakar took the reins of power.
The documents indicate that no fewer than 1,200 people were said to have been employed and added into the state’s payroll beginning from July 2015.
Another startling revelation showed that all the 1,200 workers, though have different names and dates of birth, have the same Bank Verification Number (BVN), meaning that their entire salary was being paid into one and same bank account under different names.
The salaries vary from N39,000 to N86,000 and above.
The speaker also wondered how Bauchi State monthly salary skyrocketed from N2.6 billion per month in May 2015 to N7 billion without recruitment of additional workers, especially as the governor had early in his administration, fired thousands of political appointees engaged by former governor Isa Yuguda, which should have reduced the state’s wage bill drastically.
He also accused the governor of diverting billions of local government funds in the last three and half years.
The Speaker also recalled how the governor  chased away contractors renovating Dass Central Mosque but failed to renovate it after repeated promises and  revealed how he personally paid for the renovation of the mosque.
It would be recalled that the Bauchi state Government had owed workers more than one year salaries following series of verifications allegedly to remove ghost workers from the state’s payroll by the present administration at its inception in 2015, but sadly, shortly after that, the monthly salary bill increased from N2.6 billion to about N7 billion.
In August 2016, political leaders and stakeholders from the state led by the Speaker sought President Mohammadu Buhari’s intervention on the non-payment of salaries which didn’t yield any result and has been the major source of disagreement between the Speaker, political leaders, stakeholders and the Bauchi state Governor.