Kwara State Government said on Tuesday that it had discovered 516 workers recruited illegally in its service, between 2014 and 2015. The State's Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development, Mr Musa Yeketi, made the disclosure at a news briefing in Ilorin.

Yeketi said that the irregularity was noticed shortly after the three-day verification conducted for teachers, employed by the Teaching Service Commission, between 2014 and 2015.

He said that Gov. Abdulfatah Ahmed only approved the appointment of 449 workers for the period under review, while the record showed 965 as the figure of the employed staff.

"We want to clear some impressions about the state government's move to sack workers, which is not so. "'The essence of this verification is to ascertain the staff strength between 2014 and 2015, because there are conflicting figures.

"On record, we have 965 people employed but we found out that Gov. Ahmed approved only 449 people to be employed, with 299 people as teaching staff and 150 as security guards. "So, we need to know those who were illegally-employed and the people who perpetrated the act," Yeketi said.

The commissioner said that some people had employment letters without posting letters, only to be transferred after a year, without haven worked in the previous year. "In the course of screening, we discovered that all the staff had letters of employment, but not all have posting letters.

"Those that don't have posting letters now ended up having transfer letters, a year and some months after being employed, without first been posted to work anywhere before. "So, this shows some discrepancies in their employment, while we are trying to find out those who did the work," Yeketi said.

said that the ministry was awaiting the governor's next line of action on the issue. The commissioner said that the salaries of those discovered to be irregularly-employed would be put on hold, starting from July.

"We have already briefed the governor on the discoveries made, and we are waiting for him to give directives on what should be done because this is a fraud case."