Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, the governor of Benue State, claims that as a result of a recent staff verification exercise on civil servants, his administration has saved N1.2 billion.

During an Extraordinary Stakeholders Meeting of the state’s ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, the governor revealed this on Friday.

The state administration disclosed on Thursday that 23 local government areas in the state had discovered nearly 2,500 ghost workers.

The governor said during the meeting on Friday that certain fraudulent activities had been found and removed from the state’s payroll after the first stage of the verification exercise had been completed successfully.

“After the first stage of the forensic, we found over 2500 ghosts in the classrooms and the local government.”

According to him, the government has reduced the amount that used to go to ghost schools and ghost employees, which was N1.6 billion, to N800 million.

He also stated that the teachers whose two months’ worth of salary were being held up due to the audit have begun receiving alerts about their pay.