Stemming the ghost worker syndrome

For several years now successive administrations in the country, at both the federal and state levels, have continued to inundate Nigerians with news of large numbers of ghost workers being constantly uncovered in the civil service system. Huge figures have also been bandied by governments as amounts being lost annually to the seemingly intractable phenomenon, in the form of monthly salaries paid to thousands of non-existent workers captured in their respective payrolls.

We are indeed worried by these startling revelations. Our worry stems from the fact that resources that could have been channelled into other productive ventures are being wasted on non-existent workers. We are also worried by the frequency of these revelations. Barely a few years or months after a sitting government announces it has uncovered a huge number of ghost workers, a succeeding government comes up with similar announcement. The question is, beyond these public announcements, what have these government done to stem the tide?

For instance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former minister of finance, in October 2014 announced that the Federal Government had saved N170 billion, in salaries and allowances, following the discovery of 60,000 ghost workers in federal establishments across the country during a staff audit of its ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Yet Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, told the Senate Committee on Finance recently that about 23,000 ghost workers had been uncovered in the federal civil service.

Across the states, it is the same tale of sleaze – from Kebbi, where a Verification Committee on Local Government Staff uncovered 9,258 ghost workers in the 21 local councils of the state in November 2012, to Plateau, where not less than 6,000 ghost workers were discovered in the state’s civil service in 2013 after a biometric verification exercise carried out by the state government; Abia, where the Okezie Ikpeazu administration in August 2015 said it had saved N160 million after the state embarked on a staff verification exercise to eliminate ghost workers from its public service; Benue, where over 10,000 ghost teachers and over 80 fully-staffed ghost schools were reportedly uncovered in October 2015, to Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Delta, Imo and others.

More worrisome, however, is that in spite of these revelations made over the years, we are yet to see any credible step being taken to expose and punish the perpetrators of this ghost-worker menace or even recover the money they have looted, and we believe this is partly why the malaise has continued to fester.

Undoubtedly, the reluctance of governments to take steps to recover these monies is an endorsement of corruption, a manifestation of impunity which encourages intending looters to seek to perfect their crime. In a sick system where there is so much impunity, a system that allows corruption of all descriptions to fester without any form of deterrent, there invariably will not be a disincentive to commit crime.

We recall that as minister of finance, Okonjo-Iweala introduced the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS), which analysts see as panacea for ghost workers syndrome in Nigerian public service. Has the Federal Government fully implemented this system across the board? Have the state governments domesticated it? If they have, why do we still have the problem of ghost workers?

All considered, we insist that the solution to the ghost worker syndrome lies with the government. We urge the federal and state governments to get serious and run the public sector transparently, collaborate with trade unions to establish the accurate number of workers employed by biometric capturing, adopt electronic payment system for salaries and allowances, make list of workers employed from time to time and the units to which they are deployed accessible to unions and members of the public, publish the list of workers in every unit on departmental notice boards and on the internet and make it available for verification and or objections by workers, trade unions and members of the public, name and shame those purportedly discovered as ghost workers, punish offenders to serve as deterrent, and fully implement the IPPIS in the civil/public service. It is our belief that these steps will go a long way in putting a stop the ghost worker phenomenon and free up direly needed funds for development.