The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation has revealed that there are over 80,000 ghost police officers in Nigeria who are under the Federal Government’s payroll.

The revelation is coming after a tedious head count of its staff and full integration of payrolls across the country’s 42 Police Commands and formations into the federal information structure.

The Federal Government instituted the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) last February. After the implementation of the IPPIS, the previous official figure of 371,800 police officers in the country fell to 291,685.

This discovery means that an estimated 80,115 ‘ghost’ officers and men have until now continually received salaries and benefits running into billions of naira from the coffers of the Federal Government

The Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun also disclosed that the IPPIS revealed similar ghost workers in other parastatals and agencies like the Immigration Service, the Prison Service and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

Although the plan to initiate the IPPIS was greeted with protests in cities like Port Harcourt and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja hinged on the argument that the integration would delay payment of salaries, the FG, through the Finance Ministry insisted on going ahead with the plan in a bid to tackle corruption across its public and private sectors.