THE existence of ghost workers has been a recurring issue in both federal and state civil services across the country. Year in, year out, government at the various levels carries out endless biometric verifications; and at the end of every exercise, discoveries are made – numbers representing ghost workers are discovered and huge sums of money are allegedly saved through this process. However, no one is ever arrested or prosecuted.
It is neither a new trend in Nigeria, nor is it limited to one state. As a means through which huge sums of money are siphoned from the public treasury, the ghost worker syndrome has become an age-long problem that seems intractable. Some measures such as privatisation, commercialisation, as well as retrenchment, and the recently-adopted Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) designed to tackle this hydra-headed monster, have failed to yield positive results.
The public service monster
As a matter of fact, there have been claims of discovery of ghost workers by politicians, especially the lawmakers (legislators), with many beating their chests to have saved the government money that would have been siphoned by civil servants who control the payroll systems of their various ministries, departments and agencies. These much flaunted achievements are yet to yield results as the monster continues to dog the country’s public service system.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on Thursday, September 15, revealed that about N50 billion (N49.9 billion) was earmarked as salaries for ghost workers in the first half of 2022.
ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, made the revelation during an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Finance during preparation for the 2023 budget at the National Assembly, Abuja.
According to him, the ICPC’s thorough scrutiny of approved budgets for various MDAs saved the government from wasting billions of naira on fictitious projects.
He said, “N300bn would have been wasted by the federal government on duplicated projects inserted into the 2021 budget and N100bn for the same purpose in the current fiscal year if not tracked and intercepted by ICPC.
“The same pre-emptive move saved the country from spending N49.9bn for salaries of ghost workers put on fictitious payroll by the fraudulent MDAs between January and June this year.”
“Names of MDAs involved in project duplications running into intercepted billions of Naira and fictitious pay rolls are available and will be forwarded to the committee.
He added, “The good thing about the pre-emptive moves made by us is that monies for the fraudulent acts were prevented from being released to the affected MDAs and it’s gratifying that the Finance Ministry and Accountant General Office cooperated with us.” he added.A former governor of Kwara State, once disclosed that the ghost workers syndrome has been with us for more than 30 years. As of June 2016, it was reported that the Federal Government and 10 other states had lost over N538 billion to ghost workers.
Out of this staggering amount, the Federal Government paid N220 billion to 103,000 ghost workers between September 2013 and May 2015. The other N318 billion was paid by 10 states, namely: Katsina, N30 billion; Kano, N17 billion; Rivers, N60 billion; Benue, N10.2 billion; Oyo, N18 billion; Abia, N26.5 billion; Adamawa, N20.4 billion; Akwa-Ibom, N15 billion; Bayelsa, N120 billion and Ekiti, N1.2 billion.
The Minister of Finance and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had in 2020 during a retreat organised by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation for federal directors in Kano, disclosed that the federal government has flushed out 70,000 ghost workers from its payroll.
This excludes the 24,000 ghost workers discovered in the payroll of the federal civil services which saved the government in excess of N2billion in salaries in 2016, and the over 60,000 ghost workers weeded out of the federal government payroll in 2014.
Ahmed explained that the numbers were detected and uncovered through the implementation of the IPPIS. “IPPIS is eliminating ghost workers and very soon the nation would be free of ghost workers and all criminal tendencies attributed to financial management,” she said.
The root of corruption
The Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF), a New York-based international organisation that works with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) across the world to facilitate citizens’ engagement in fighting corruption and holding of governments and public officials accountable, noted that a newborn baby in Zamfara State was added to government payroll, earning about $150 a month for two or three years as a public sector ghost worker as of 2011.
According to the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General of the state at the time, Garba Gajam, the baby was found to be getting salaries without performing a job.
The employee (baby) was listed as being a month old in government records, but Gajam said the child’s father actually started collecting the salary before the baby was born. Records also show that the baby has a diploma.
The PTF noted that the ghost workers scam is at the core of corruption in Nigeria. This is echoing what the government knows but would not admit – that solving the problem is almost impossible so long as many political stakeholders continue to benefit from the system.
Thus, in Nigeria, the ghost workers scam has become a horrific black hole through which huge sums of public funds disappear. And the government (federal and state) appears unwilling to tackle it because they are part of the syndicate.
Checks by NaijaTimes showed that every year, recurrent expenditure swallows a larger part of the budget due to ghost workers scam, leaving little or nothing for capital expenditure. Hence, there is perpetually not enough money for public infrastructures such as road maintenance, electricity, functional health facilities and public transportation among others.
Speaking with NaijaTimes via telephone, Prof Yunus Adeleke Dauda, a Professor of Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at Lagos State University (LASU), stated that as a syndrome, the ghost worker scam has been a problem across all tiers of the government in the country, leading to the government spending billions of naira on non-existing employees.
He averred that apart from traditional ghost workers which are fictitious and non-existing employees added to the payroll by payroll managers, there are also the non-apparent ghost workers.
“These categories of ghost workers fraud are real staff in the public sector who receive fictitious pay through payroll irregularities. They include workers who receive unearned salaries through false means. For instance, a staff that has multiple jobs in the civil service receives dual or many salaries using pseudo names.
“Also, they are employees who earn levels of pay or allowances greater than their rank, employees on temporary absence or leave of absence but who continue to earn full salary, and employees on transfer or retirement but whose names are in the payroll,” he said.
The university don further explained that the impact of scam in public service in Nigeria is enormous, as research have showed that ghost workers drain the resources of the country as hundreds of billions of Naira is spent paying salaries and pensions entitlements to non-existent workers and in many cases to individuals who have no reason for collecting such pay other than the fact that they know somebody who could easily add their names to the payroll.
According to Dauda, the ghost workers scam has been around for a long time. He added that the scam is not limited to the salary payroll but also to pension payroll, as many of the ghost workers enumerated above naturally graduate to the pension scheme while others are added by managers of the pension payroll.
“The scam is not limited to the federal government alone; it is across all tiers of the government. It is only that the scale is higher at the federal level, as the federal government is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria.
“The problem is so severe that the pension schemes of many of the parastatals of the government spend huge resources in trying to fish out the culprits and in some cases collapsed under the weight,” he added.
He continued, “The IPPIS is garbage in, garbage out, as the same set of people manages the information system of the various MDAs. So it’s going to take a long time to solve the problem. To do this, the government needs to engage the services of forensic experts, especially in the field of accounting.”
Until this is done or proper accounting procedures followed, the country will continue to bleed from this rather vicious ghost!
