Biometric Technology Case Studies of Vertical Markets

Biometric Identification for Half a Million Nigerian Federal Employees

Summary: Biometrics Identification System to Prevent Ghost Workers in Nigeria’s Federal Payroll Program

M2SYS works closely with its clients, enabling them to capitalize on the benefits of using biometrics for security and accelerating their return on investment (ROI). These case studies of multi-modal biometrics security deployments for various verticals show how biometric security software solutions can protect the welfare of citizens, stop corruption and fraud, and create efficiency.

The federal government of Nigeria implemented the M2SYS Hybrid Biometric Platform™ identification solution to register and track half a million federal employees from 300 distribution locations throughout the country. Considered to be one of the largest workforce management biometric identification projects in the world, using M2SYS Bio-Plugin™ Hybrid Biometric Platform™ technology to register all civil service federal employees helps to eliminate Ghost workers who were illegally receiving payroll benefits.

Challenge

Nigeria’s federal payroll system was being illegally manipulated by users who entered fictitious identities to defraud the federal government out of benefits they were never entitled to. The federal government of Nigeria discovered that it was paying millions of dollars per year in payroll to illegally registered Ghost workers who were not legitimate, eligible employees. Common among governments and private businesses with large workforces, Ghost workers seek to collect benefits they are not qualified for by falsifying their identities. Often, without modern identification technologies, governments like Nigeria do not have the ability to find these illegal Ghost workers and remove them from the payroll system.

Solution

The federal government of Nigeria turned to M2SYS for a biometric identification solution to accurately identify half of a million federal civil service employees and remove all Ghost workers from their payroll system. The government set up biometric identification registration at 300 payroll distribution centers throughout the country and has registered hundreds of thousands of federal employees into the system, identifying thousands of Ghost workers who have since been removed from their database saving millions of dollars per year in payroll expenses.

Benefit

By utilizing the Bio-Plugin™ Hybrid Biometric Platform™ identification system developed by M2SYS Technology, Nigerian federal civil service employees can now be uniquely identified, virtually eliminating duplicate registration in any form and eradicating Ghost worker payroll fraud.