The secretary of Sokoto State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Alhaji Ibrahim Dingyadi, has said that the state government had discovered about 4,000 ghost primary school teachers on its payroll.

``The ghost teachers were uncovered after four-month verification of all the teachers in the 1,965 primary schools across the state,’’ Dingyadi told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sokoto yesterday.

The secretary said the exercise was conducted jointly with the state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) and the state House of Assembly’s Committee on Education.

Dingyadi also said the exercise was successfully conducted between July and October 2013.

He said the salaries of teachers in the state during the period were paid through table payments.

``The exercise became imperative as a result of the implementation of the new national minimum wage of N18,000 for the teachers.

``As at now, we are on the verge of completing the computation of the amount of money saved as a result of the discovery of the ghost teachers,” Dingyadi said.

The SUBEB secretary restated the state government’s commitment to do everything humanly possible to fully revamp the primary and junior secondary education sub-sector in the state.