The pension reform tax team has uncovered about 71,135 ghost pensioners after the first phase of its biometric and verification.
The team was mandated by the Federal Government to restructure and sanitise the system.
Investigations revealed that before the biometric exercise, there were about 141,792 pensioners throughout the country with a total monthly pension of N3.3bn.
Our correspondent learnt that after the first phase, the team came back with a total number of 70,657 genuine pensioners out of the 141,792 pensioners before the commencement of the exercise.
A source said, “These are the findings of the team, realising 71,135 ghost pensioners. With this discovery, the total monthly pension of these genuine pensioners dropped to N790m.”
It was also learnt that there are over 44,320 pensioners throughout the country whose names had been missing and had not been receiving their entitlements.