Nairobi County, under the leadership of Governor Johnson Sakaja, made payments amounting to Ksh47.6 million to ghost workers during the 2024/25 financial year, according to a special audit by the Office of the Auditor-General.
The audit, conducted between December 2024 and February 2025, examined county payrolls across 26 devolved units.
In Nairobi, auditors selected 89 employees for physical verification but 27 did not appear.
These 27 individuals received a combined Ksh47,552,597 during the review period.
Their absence raised questions about whether they were genuine employees or part of a wider payroll fraud scheme.
Ghost Workers in Kenya
The auditors noted that the county made several attempts to reach the missing workers, but none responded.
The report concluded that without physical verification, the authenticity of those names on the payroll could not be confirmed.
The finding placed Nairobi among the counties with significant risks of fraudulent salary payments.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu said failure of employees to present themselves pointed to weaknesses in payroll management and internal controls.
She warned that these gaps enabled irregular, unverified salary payments.
Across the country, the special audit revealed a broader pattern.
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Nearly 600 county workers from 26 counties could not be traced.
Collectively, those individuals received Kh978 million over three years.
The report showed that in several counties, between 28 percent and 52 percent of sampled employees failed verification.
Machakos, Mandera, and Kajiado were among the most affected. In Mandera, 49 of 99 sampled workers did not appear, raising questions about the Sh112 million paid to them.
In Kajiado, 94 of 189 sampled workers did not show up, despite repeated notices.
Nairobi’s absence rate stood at 30.3 percent, placing it within the national trend of worrying payroll inconsistencies.
Nairobi is the leading Fraud Hub
National audits have consistently pointed to payroll fraud as a recurring problem in devolved government.
A separate review by Kenya Insights reported that 22 counties together spent Sh6.5 billion on ghost workers in the first nine months of the 2024/25 financial year.
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Nairobi led the country, channeling Sh629.63 million through manual payrolls outside the electronic system.
According to the Controller of Budget, the use of manual payroll increases the risk of abuse and creates opportunities for unverified salary payments.
The main sources of the problem are weak human resource controls, poor record-keeping, and a lack of routine physical verification of staff.
The Public Financial Management Reforms Secretariat noted that ghost workers fall into two groups: real individuals fraudulently placed on the payroll without their knowledge, and non-existent individuals created by payroll officers.
Both forms allow salary payments to continue unnoticed unless audits intervene.
In Nairobi, the Ksh47.6 million loss highlighted how even a limited sample can reveal large gaps in oversight.
Nairobi County’s payroll issues come at a time when the county faces pressure over spending, service delivery, and pending bills.
Previous audits flagged billions in losses from irregular recruitment, unexplained wage bill increases, and payments made outside official systems.
In the 2023/24 period alone, another audit reported that 2,000 county workers on the payroll had no proof of employment, contributing to hundreds of millions in unexplained salary payments.
Although the audit covered an earlier year, the pattern suggests long-standing challenges in managing the county workforce.
The Auditor-General’s latest findings add urgency to calls for counties to adopt stricter payroll controls.
The report recommends regular physical verification, full adoption of automated payroll systems, and stronger supervision of human resource officers.
It also urges county executives to investigate flagged names during audits and recover funds when fraud is confirmed.
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