German biometrics company, Dermalog says that over 23,000 ghost workers have been discovered in the Civil Service using biometric identification technology, underscoring the system’s “successful contribution towards combating fraud in Nigeria.”
The German company says it decided to introduce the fraud-preventive identification system in Nigeria following recent statistics from the Federal Government which stated that more than 23, 000 public service employees either did not exist with their recorded name or had been receiving their salary unlawfully.
Dermalog further cited the case where 312, 000 public servants were audited, out of which 23, 306 were found to have received their salary unlawfully or did not even exist. In that case, some received payments from several sources at the same time, and where 7% of the audited government personnel were not existing or were double paid was also made possible with the help of the earlier stated Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) supplied by the company.
The company claimed that the campaign against corruption and mal-administration launched by the Nigerian Government under President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2015 which resulted in the removal of numerous jobs from public service payrolls was aided by the Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS) of the Nigerian banks, supplied by Dermalog.
Having implemented a country-wide biometric system for 23 Nigerian banks and for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2014 and 2015 which identifies bank customers by means of fingerprints and face recognition before they open or access a bank account and issues them a BVN (Bank Verification Number), the bank accounts of more than 24 million registered bank customers have been secured by Dermalog’s biometrics technology, the German company.
Dermalog emphasized that in addition to these achievements, the BVN system has now helped to find and eliminate the 23, 306 non-existing public servants which enables the country to achieve monthly savings of 10.5 million euros and is making a sustainable contribution to the positive development of the Nigerian state.
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