While thousands of Nigerians are looking for jobs on a daily basis, some top government officials criminally enrich themselves by employing ghost workers and collecting ‘their’ monthly salaries and allowances. What are the steps being taken to address the problem? SAMUEL ODAUDU files in this report.
Last year, after a stunning discovery of the high rate of ghost workers in the Civil Service, the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, threatened that, she was going to publish details of appropriation, to statutory bodies, agencies affected by her findings. The list of ghost workers would be sent to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, for investigation, she said.
The minister was said to have been overwhelmed by several allegations indicating that, certain powerful persons in the civil service are protecting ‘ghost workers’ in the service from facing the wrath of the law.
For instance, the director of Centre for Social Justice, CSJ, Eze Onyekwere, accused the Minister of Finance alleging that, she had refused to release names of persons shielding criminal elements in the service. According to the activist, the minister on the payroll of the Budget Office of the Federation, BOF, before the verification exercise carried about 1,000 workers.
“If 749 ghost workers were found in one office, and there were the head of personnel who confirmed the staff list. There is a head of Accounts/Payroll who prepared the vouchers and a Permanent Secretary who signed off the vouchers before the monies were released; yet, nobody has been prosecuted. The federal government is not sincere about the fight against ghost workers,” Mr. Onyekwere said.
However, the minister through her spokesperson, Paul Nwabuikwu, denied allegation from Mr. Onyekwere that, his requests that the ministry should furnish him with relevant details was turned down. The transparency of the ministry, he said, is manifest through the monthly publication of allocations to the three tiers of government. He said, the Ministry had no basis for rejecting any legitimate requests from civil society groups for information on allocations to any government ministry or agency.
Besides, the minister stated that, the Ministry of Finance has to work with the agencies concerned in order to collate necessary information from them. “These agencies are all on first-line charge to the Federation Account and therefore the ministry must work with them to obtain the necessary information,” the spokesperson said. The agencies include the Independent National Electoral Commission, National Assembly, National Human Rights Commission, National Judicial Council, Niger Delta Development Commission, Universal Basic Education, among others.
However, in a recent statement, Dr. Iweala stated that, out of the MDAs that have been verified, more than 45,000 ghost workers earning about N118 billion have been weeded out.
Most public sectors in the country have been lamenting on the high rate of brazen criminal act of corruption through employment of ghost workers.
What this means is that, ghost workers have been milking dry public resources under fictitious names and they are being covered by powerful persons in government.
Some reports had indicated that, Katsina State uncovered 9,000 ghost workers on its payroll; Oyo had 7,000 ghost workers. Reports also indicate that workers verification interim reports are being altered to delete no less than 947 fictitious workers names on Zamfara State government’s payroll. In Niger State, 7,000 ghost workers were identified on the state’s payroll. This was discovered following an audit exercise. Similarly, 5,000 ghost workers were discovered in the Bauchi State’s 20 local governments.
In a lay man’s language, governments simply discover that, the number of ‘workers’ receiving salaries, pensions and other allowances, do not officially exist at all as human beings. They are fake workers but some one else is collecting their salaries and allowances.
In order to verify the authenticity of some of the staff force of some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), the federal and some state governments have at various times confirmed that, governments at different levels have been paying huge sums of money into the pockets of some top government officials.
Adama Abutu, a civil servant based in Abuja stated that, “it is no longer news that, quite a significant number of ministers, governors, permanent secretaries, directors, council chairmen and a host other functionaries in the country are shameless thieves and robbers. They steal directly from the government coffers with impunity.”
He was also furious that, while hundreds and thousands of Nigerians are looking for jobs and are bluntly turned back, some corrupt civil servants are busy feasting on the nation in the name of ghost workers. “Do you now understand what our unemployed youths go through to get jobs? How can people be so wicked? Some body is busy collecting money he does not deserve. That is how top officials sell jobs to poor Nigerians. This should be corrected,” he said.
In order to confront this problem, the federal government embarked on a verification exercise by biometric capturing data programmes. The services of consultants were sought to stem the tide and the result have been revealing.
In Osun State, for instance, government had to sponsor radio jingles and advocacies against corruption in the civil service.
Presently, the federal government has introduced e-pay system and from reports, this has put under critical check the issue of multiple payments and other associated fraud in the system. In addition, the Finance Ministry has recently directed that, the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation must approve all federal payments, including workers’ salaries before such payments are made or contract monies are released.
The weeding exercise is said to be a continuous programme and that possibly, those who are breached civil service rules or are shielding ghost workers may soon face prosecution.