The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Ghosts

  • Ghosts, ghosts everywhere…

    •…As PTAD suspends 24,000 ‘ghost’ retirees from FG’s pension payroll

    As it possible that the entire corridors and precincts of the Nigerian civil service premises are streaming with ‘ghosts’? Has the Nigerian workforce been invaded by aliens from outer space who draw salaries and emoluments secretively even on to retirement? Why is the ‘ghost’-in-the payroll conundrum peculiar to Nigeria’s public service and hardly heard of in the private sector? How come no government, nay, no president has deemed it necessary to dig into this comical, albeit invidious and economically ruinous practice?

    We ask these questions because of the alarming incidence of the so-called ‘ghosts’ in Nigeria’s public work environment. Between the administrations of President Goodluck Jonathan and the current one, the number of ‘ghosts’ we are told have been exorcised from the payrolls of the Federal Civil Service must be in the region of about 200,000.

    Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was the Finance Minister under President Jonathan, announced the discovery of more than 50,000 ‘ghosts’ upon the introduction of electronic data into the federal pay system. Her successor, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, also announced most triumphantly that tens of billions of naira had been saved with the uncovering of a horde of ‘ghosts’ on government’s payroll.

    Last April, Mrs Adeosun once again regaled us with her latest exorcist feat when she discovered a staggering 80,000 ‘ghost’ policemen out of the 371,000 strong officers and men of the Nigerian Police Force. You would agree that managing a regular policeman in Nigeria must be challenging enough, now a ‘ghost’ policeman! Well, while we may want to make light of this matter, the import is grave for all Nigerians everywhere: N22 billion of your tax is spirited away every month by some unseen hands! Please do the arithmetic for a one year period and see if this will not evoke tears in you.

    Now this: the Federal Government has once again announced most gleefully that it has just suspended 24,021 ghost retirees from its pension payroll. The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), which is in charge of Federal Government pensioners, revealed this in the report of its verification exercise for the period from 2015 to 2018.

    This number, over 20, 000 did not show up for authentication during the exercise.  Therefore, they were suspended from the scheme.

    Going by the clips of the PTAD report as reviewed in the media, the directorate’s processes appear like a walk through a thick forest thereby lending itself to opportunities to massive fraud.

    For instance, PTAD seems to handle the pensions of retirees of all federal civil servants, which include all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as retirees of numerous Federal Government’s privatized agencies.

    This is way too large and the sheer size of the population is bound to be unwieldy for any one agency to handle. For instance the report shows that 98, 259 retirees are on the roll of Parastatal Pension Department alone. This explains why it would take three years to carry out verification; it explains why many retire and have to wait a couple of years to get enlisted on the payroll.

    It also explains why ‘ghosts’ can creep into the system in large numbers and enjoy the benefits of the real retirees for many years undetected. It also explains how billions of naira could be lifted from pension funds (as we have seen in the case of Abdulrasheed Maina and several other, without the government being the wiser for it.)

    We are aware that the pension scheme has come a long way from what it used to be. A bit of improvement has been wrought in the last decade of reform.  But we urge the government to do more. There is need for a total review of the various pension schemes with a view to complete digitalization, making them less cumbersome, more transparent and retirees friendly.

    Finally, government must rid the system of ‘ghosts’ in its entirety. The revenue lost to the loopholes in the system is too enormous to be ignored. The masterminds and breeders of these ‘ghosts’ must be fished out and punished.

  • Ghosts did it

    Not only did the move to recall Senator Dino Melaye (Kogi West) fail, the result of the verification of signatories to the recall petition by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showed that the attempt was unpopular. INEC said only 18, 762 signatures were genuine, though there were 39, 285 signatories. INEC’s presiding officer for the verification, Prof. Okente Morthy of the University of Abuja, said the number of genuine signatures fell short of the number required.    A report said: “The genuine signatories represent a dismal 5.34 per cent of the total signatories to the petition, which fell short of 51 per cent or 98,364 signatures required for the petition to sail through. It was observed that the verification failed largely due to fictitious and forged signatures and names of dead persons affixed to the recall petition by its promoters.”

    It is noteworthy that before the verification Senator Melaye had alleged that there were forged signatures in the petition against him.  Melaye had reportedly said through one of his legislative aides, Malam Abubakar Sadiq: “Let me also say authoritatively that here in Lokoja Local Government Council, several others whose names and signatures appeared on the list of the signatories to this failed exercise were identified and known to us as being dead long before now. Such people like late Abdullahi Abubakar, his immediate younger sister late Halima Lawal Abubakar and Ibrahim Adama of Unit Code 021, Adankolo Ring Road in Ward ‘A’, Lokoja Local Government Council.”

    Whether Melaye’s forgery claims were correct or incorrect, whether the petitioners were verifiable or unverifiable, there is a time to prove or disprove, and there is a lawful body in charge of verification. Now that INEC has exposed fictitious and forged signatures and names of dead persons in the recall petition, it is time to find out what happened.

    Some of Melaye’s constituents had submitted a petition to recall the senator to INEC’s headquarters in Abuja in June 2017.  A report said: “One Mr. Cornelius Olowo led the petitioners to submit the recall petition which alleged poor representation as one of the reasons for the move to recall Melaye.”

    It is interesting that Kogi State Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Haddy Ametuo, was quoted as saying that “some ghosts” initiated the recall process against Senator Melaye. So, the police should be looking for the “ghosts” in this plot, including ghost petitioners and ghost forgers.

     

     

     

  • Nigeria Police ghosts

    Government has to deal with the ghost-worker phenomenon decisively

    NIGERIS’s perennial ghost-worker problem reached new depths of infamy when the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, announced that 80,115 of them had been discovered in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

    The anomaly was exposed as a result of the full incorporation of the country’s 42 police commands and formations into the Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) in February. The long-assumed figure of 371,800 officers in the NPF shrank to 291,685 after the exercise was carried out.

    Government is to be commended for its dogged insistence on continuing with its programme of deploying the IPPIS in the payrolls of all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), especially in the face of stout resistance from the police hierarchy. In October 2017, there were protests in Abuja, Kaduna and Port Harcourt by policemen objecting to the delay in payment of salaries which were ostensibly attributed to ongoing migration to IPPIS.

    The significance of this discovery is hard to over-estimate. The most obvious is the financial implication of losing billions in public funds over time to ghost-workers representing 21.548 per cent of the NPF’s staff strength. The steady hemorrhaging of huge amounts in the NPF and elsewhere will definitely have had negative repercussions on bureaucratic efficiency and the national economy as a whole.

    Then there is the grim realisation that the country’s police force is even fewer than hitherto believed. That means that Nigeria is much more ill-equipped to deal with the rash of security challenges confronting it; the reduced numbers imply that the police are far more overworked and less able to cope than was previously thought. The implications for the efficient handling of communal disturbances and other breakdowns of law and order are sobering.

    There is also the unflattering insight into the ethical state and competence of the NPF itself. The ghost-worker scam is the most communal of crimes; for it to work properly, the active collaboration of hundreds of police officers across many diverse units is required. How did over 80,000 names get onto the police payroll in the first place? How were payments made, in spite of Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) ostensibly validating all account-holders? Why did the Police Service Commission (PSC) apparently have no inkling of what was going on?

    It is critical that the nation move beyond what has become the routine celebration of anti-corruption initiatives like this one. The unearthing of financial malfeasance is not enough; true progress can only be made when safeguards are put in place to ensure that it never happens again and those who engaged in it are punished to the fullest extent of the law.

    Establishing preventive measures to drastically reduce ghost-workers is a vital strategy, given the incredible regularity with which they are discovered at federal, state and local government levels. Repeated discoveries, year after year, often in the same parastatal or ministry, are a clear indication that the steps taken to eliminate the phenomenon, if any, are not working.

    If this situation is to be reversed, it must begin with the identification and punishment of those involved in ghost-worker swindles. Since all payments are routed through the accounts departments of the organisations involved, that is where investigations should begin. The relevant officers should be made to explain who authorised such payments. Banks should be compelled to release the identities of those who operated the accounts of ghost-workers. Those found to be implicated in these offences must be prosecuted.

    Regulatory agencies, such as the Police Service Commission in the case of the NPF, must be thoroughly overhauled to make them more efficient and responsive. In particular, the near-incestuous relationships which often exist between regulators and the organisations they oversee must be eliminated altogether. Not much can be achieved when watchdogs find it profitable to turn a blind eye to the underhand dealings of those they are supposed to be superintending

  • B.I.G: ARTISTES DIVIDED OVER EXISTENCE OF GHOSTS

    SOON to be released movie, Banana Island Ghost (B.I.G), has sparked a debate among Nollywood artistes on whether or not ghosts actually exist. In a discussion with some of movie casts, they had the opportunity to to air their opinion on the veracity or otherwise of ghost tales.

    For instance, when asked about her stand on the topic, Kemi ‘Lala’ Akindoju gave a strong No!

    “I don’t believe in ghosts. I am a Christian, so I don’t believe in ghosts. Banana Island Ghost is fantasy. We must begin to explore genres like that. We watched Beauty and the Beast. It is fantasy. Fairytale movies are all fantasy, they will never happen,” she opined.

    On the other hand, Akah as he likes to be called grudgingly admitted to the presence of ghosts in our midst. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, I believe that spirits are real and that the spiritual world is real. Yes, I believe that ghosts exist.”

    While disagreeing with the idea of ghosts, up and coming actress, Bimbo Ademoye gave an interesting analysis on why they do not exist.

    “No, I don’t believe ghosts exist… no. My ‘Nana’ passed, my grandfather passed and I haven’t seen them and we were really close. I would think they would come back and say hello to me. This is Biblical but everyone at the end of the day will be at the gates of heaven to receive judgement on judgement day, so I really don’t think anyone would want to come back and say “hello, how are you doing, how is earth treating you?” I would love to have a ghost though,” she stated.

    One actor who does not agree with her is Saheed Balogun. In his view, this is not a question for Yoruba man.

    “Just tell a Yoruba man that there’s a ghost at that junction there, you’ll see him running left. If it is a white man they will want to see. Me, I have never seen a ghost, but if you mention one now, I won’t see, but you will see me running. I believe that there are ghosts. All around the world, there is a name for it. For them to give it a name, it exists for real. So I won’t deceive myself, what does not exist does not have a name,” he said.

    Bringing a twist to the debate, Patrick Diabuah, who plays the ghost in the movie, was firm in his stance that ghosts do not exist.

    “I believe there are spirits, souls of the departed somewhere. But I don’t believe in the haunting kind. I believe when someone is gone, they are gone. There might be some other kinds of supernatural beings around, but ghosts as per my great grandfather coming back? Nah! I don’t believe in it. I have seen a ghost before though, in Rentaghost movie,” were his words.

  • A register of ghosts

    It is the document on which candidates’ fate hangs. Known as the voter’s register, it contains the names of all eligible voters in the land. Eligibility is determined by age, which the constitution fixes at 18. Anyone under 18 cannot register as a voter. Where an underage registers, he is deemed to have committed an offence and he is liable to prosecution. Over the years, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the register’s custodian, has come under fire for filling it with fictitious names and ineligible voters.

    We have seen voter’s list with names like Nelson Mandela, Mike Tyson, Kofi Annan, who are not Nigerians. While those who registered in one part of the country found their names in other states; yet others did not find their names on the register at all. Our voter’s list is just that in name. It is nothing more than a sheet of paper stitched together by some people to fool us. INEC or whatever name it was called in the past, never got the voter’s list right. The electoral umpire seemed to take delight in filling the document with names of people supplied to it by those in power, who are bent on winning elections.

    If this was not the case, many who trooped out to register under the scorching sun or cold weather will not end up not finding their names on the list during its display. As much as the electoral commission tries to vouch for the voter’s list, evidence has time and again shown that there is something untidy about it. It is either the commission is colluding with some people to mess up the register or it is outright incapable of discharging a simple task. By this submission, I am not indicting the Prof Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC, but a general castigation of the commission over the years.  The problem with our voter’s list did not start today, so the prof and his men should not take the whole blame for it.

    But, can we trust him to restore our faith in the voter’s list? The register is crucial in the discharge of INEC’s job. Without a clean register, the commission may have failed in its first task of ensuring free and fair elections in 2019, which is just two years away. Painfully, the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) does not give cause for cheer giving what we are hearing about what transpired in Government House, Lokoja, the Kogi State capital. INEC is accusing Governor Yahaya Bello of double registration. The governor is denying the claim. He added for good measure that perhaps it was  his  ghost that was registered since he was out of the country last May 23.

    Ghosts have always found their way into the register long before Bello made that allusion and it is all the commission’s fault. The voter’s list will continue to be filled with ghosts as long as the commission is peopled by greedy officials. Registration for an election, which is a civic duty to be performed by a citizen, has been turned to a money making venture. It is where the big money is that INEC officials will go to register and re-register people, if need be,  under fictitious names. Little wonder some people today have as many as 100 or more voter’s cards, which become their meal tickets during elections.

    But, INEC can change things with the Yahaya Bello case. The governor, who registered in Abuja on January 30, 2011, was said to have re-registered in Lokoja on May 23, 2017, contrary to the electoral law. The law frowns at double registration, but allows a voter to transfer his registration from one state to another to ensure a sane process. Since the governor has denied the allegation, it behoves INEC to come out with its proof. But isn’t there a contradiction in Bello’s claim and his spokesman’s statement that “the governor’s effort to transfer his card from Abuja to Kogi State has not been successful, hence the need to get registered in Kogi State”?

    The likes of Fanwo should know that there is no excuse for breaking the law, no matter how highly-placed a person may be. The question is how could the governor be in Dubai on May 23 as he told reporters in Abuja last Friday and at the same time be in Lokoja ‘’to get registered in Kogi State’’, as contained in Fanwo’s statement. The onus is on INEC to clear the fog. Can it do that? Yes, it can if it has the photograph of the governor’s registration. How then did his name disappear from the list? That is a question for the registration officials to answer.

     

    Haba, NJC! 

    The National Judicial Council (NJC) is at it again. After its 82nd meeting which ended on June 1, it recalled six judges who were suspended in the wake of allegations against them. It noted that since their suspension, there has been a backlog of cases in their courts. Those recalled are Justices Inyang Okoro (Supreme Court), Uwani Aba Ali (Appeal Court), Adeniyi Ademola, Hydiazara Nganyiwa, Musa Kurya, all of the Federal High Court and Agbadu James Fishim (National Industrial Court). Of all the judges, only Justice Ademola has been discharged and acquitted by Justice Jude Okeke of the Federal Capital Territory High Court. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has appealed the verdict. The others are yet to be charged to court. So, many are wondering what informed NJC’s recall of these judges. Is it proper to recall a judge whose case is yet to be determined by the appeal court? A case that may even get to the Supreme Court. On what basis did it recall the others who have not even faced trial? Since it is an eminent body of judges, has the NJC tried and found them not guilty? Well, it should remember that it cannot sit as a court in that capacity.  The judges’ recall is hasty. It would have been better for the council to  await the appellate courts’ decisions on Justice Ademola’s case and also allow time for the others’ trial.  

  • ‘Ghosts’ everywhere

    Every pore of the Nigerian public sector labour force is creeping with ‘ghost workers.’ The spooks have come to seem invincible and can’t, for once and all, be eliminated; they just keep seeping back into the system on the back of repeated and trumpeted measures – over time, by different administrations and at different levels of government – to weed them out. The numbers that you often hear cited on the payrolls of the Federal Government as well as other governments at lower levels in this country are so mind boggling that one can’t but wonder at the level of duplicity that facilitates the phenomenon.

    How the numbers perennially accumulate on payrolls defies reason and should be a fitting subject for psychic interrogation. Because it isn’t as if the public service recruitment procedure in Nigeria has no screening and validation checks built into it, not to mention that ghost workers could only get on payrolls after they had managed to open salary accounts with banks that ought to have put them through the financial system’s validation checks, like acquisition of a Bank Verification Number (BVN). These phantom entities somehow beat all the audit checks and get on the payrolls anyhow. But the surprise, at least for me, is that official narrative has always centred on purging payrolls of the spooks, and only tangentially about accountability for the brazen sleaze.

    Whereas different institutions of government have in recent memory claimed to unearth and eliminate sizeable numbers of ghost workers on their payrolls, the parasites seem to always stay embedded and hobble public sector finances. Now we officially know, for instance, that the reason the Imo State Government is finding it daunting to pay its pensioners is precisely because of the huge monthly bill, which the government already suspects is largely being drawn by ghost pensioners.

    A reported statement last week by the spokesman for Governor Rochas Okorocha, Sam Onwuemeodo, cited him as lauding Imo pensioners for “appreciating the glaring fact that a monthly pension bill of N1.4billion was quite unimaginable and too hard for the state or any other state in the country to bear, no matter the resources of such a state.” The statement said the Governor “allowed every pensioner, whether real or otherwise, to be paid so that by January 2017, the issue of ghost pensioners can be properly handled.” It added: “It is difficult to believe that Imo with 27 local governments will be paying N1.4billion monthly as pension, while another state with 44 local governments will be paying half of that amount on the same subject matter.”

    While the Imo government, in the statement, made the point that it had redeemed its promise to pay pensioners their arrears up to December 2016, evidence from the state suggested otherwise, as pensioners only recently took to the streets of Owerri in protest against outstanding payments. Reports had indicated that the state government grossly rebated the arrears, and compelled pensioners to accept the deal or nothing else.

    Just before the New Year, the Imo State Government was in the news for issuing pensioners a letter committing them to forfeiting 60 percent of their outstanding emoluments. A foul odour to the deal was that the pensioners were required to sign an undertaking to “release and discharge the Imo State Government and its agents from all past, present and future liability and from all actions, claims and demands in respect of the said accumulated pension arrears” before they would be paid the 40 percent being made available.

    Economic imperative and age-long wisdom in the axiom about a bird in hand being worth ten in the bush perhaps advised some Imo pensioners to sign up to the undertaking. But there were many others in the state chapter of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) who rejected the government’s offer. “What we are saying is that if he (the Governor) has one or two months of our pensions and gratuities, he should pay us 100 percent and not partial payment,” the state chairman of NUP, Gideon Ezeji, was reported saying.

    It is curious though that the Imo government, by its own narrative, yet has the issue of ghost pensioners (perhaps workers too) so completely off-handle, considering it announced only in May, last year, that it was henceforth adopting strict use of Bank Verification Numbers for payment of salaries and pensions; and that specifically was for the purpose of sifting out the spooks. It is either the touted measure has been poorly implemented, if not altogether sabotaged within, or that the ghosts somehow managed to remain in situ.

    But then, Imo isn’t alone with the blight of ghost workers. The Presidency in December, last year, announced that 50,000 ghost workers were flushed off the payrolls in 2016, preventing N200billion being corruptly fleeced from the public treasury. Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said the Efficiency Unit of the Federal Finance Ministry had been scrutinizing the salaries and wages of government departments and was able to lower the N151billion monthly overhead to N138billion from February, and the pension bill from N15.5billion monthly to N14.4billion.

    As for accountability, Mallam Shehu said 11 persons suspected of championing the syndicate of ghost workers had been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), with some of them already undergoing trial. But other than his word, very little has been heard or seen by the public about the suspects’ date with the law.

    In February, last year, the Finance Ministry said 23,846 ghost workers were being removed from the government’s payroll monthly. Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun explained that the spooks were unearthed on the payrolls of various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) through BVN-based staff audit and enrolment to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). According to her, N2.293billion was consequently saved on the total wage bill of the MDAs that February, compared to the level in December 2015 when the BVN audit process kicked in.

    The EFCC itself, last April, said it had uncovered 37,395 ghost workers in the Federal Civil Service, with investigations still underway. Speaking during a sensitisation event organised by the anti-graft agency, Acting Chairman Ibrahim Magu said: “Our investigations have so far revealed that the Federal Government has lost close to N1 billion to these ghost workers. The figure will definitely increase as we unravel more ghost workers buried deep in Federal Civil Service payrolls.’’

    And the purge of ghost workers from government payrolls didn’t just begin with the present administration. Under former President Goodluck Jonathan, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the government flushed out some 45,000 names of ghost workers and saved about N118billion following the implementation of the IPPIS. “The Federal Ministry of Finance has taken the additional step of referring the issue to the ICPC for further investigation, so that any identified culprits can face the full wrath of the law,” her communication adviser, Paul Nwabuikwu, said in a statement.

    The statistics are endless and they become dizzying at some point. And one could well ask: what is the actual size of the workforce from which so many spooks are being unearthed? The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Civil Service, Dr. Joe Abah, provided some hint in December 2015 when he specified the nominal roll of the Federal Civil Service as at November 2015 at 89,511. Well, perhaps the current actual is only slightly in excess of that; but it is, of course, bloated with almost an equal quantum of spooks.

    It should be obvious that the persisting challenge of ghost workers is a function of insider corruption in government as well as relevant financial systems. And to effectively deal with the challenge, government would need to go beyond cleaning out public service payrolls and vigorously interrogate how these spooks beat all the audit checks. Insiders who facilitate them must be actively prosecuted.

  • A garrison of 50,000 ghosts

    We all have our ghost stories don’t we? At one point or the other in our lives we must have encountered our own ghosts: the persistent creaking sound upstairs when you are downstairs and alone in your large house. Or that telltale sign of a presence; that footfall behind you that brings the chill to your spine during that mid-morning walk down the village stream. Yes, there is always a ghost somewhere in our subconscious reminding us about the duality of life and even existence.

    But in Nigeria, especially in the civil service, ghosts have become a part of the work force. It cannot be confirmed whether this phenomenon is known anywhere else in the world, but at that, it would never be at the hair-raising magnitude known here. In Nigeria, ghosts are said to permeate and populate the workforce at all levels – local government, state and federal.

    There are hues and cries of them rampaging in all the civil service across the country. But the Federal Government seems to win the prize with the recent announcement that 50,000 ghost workers have been eliminated from the federal service. But the real story is that these ghoulish creatures were earning an astounding N143 billion annually.

    But this is not the first time Nigerians would be apprised with this supernatural occurrence ravaging their civil service. During the last administration, the then Minister of Finance announced so gleefully that a new payment system had eliminated 40,000 workers who also happened to be ghosts.

    She never told us the mode of elimination: whether they were arrested, vaporized or cremated. Now we hear 50,000 have again been eliminated in the 2016 fiscal year. Yet again, we are not told which art of sorcery this government has applied to harness our goblins, just that their number has increased between the last government and now.

    But two salutary developments this time though: first, The Presidency has said that, “11 persons believed to be members of a syndicate responsible for the presence of 50,000 ghost workers on the Federal Government’s payroll had been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for further investigation and prosecution.”

    But Hardball cannot endure so many eerie lacunae in this story. Only 11 people controlling 50,000 ghosts who are creaming off N143 billion from government coffers every year for goodness knows how long? And it seems the Presidency is too terrified to mention and expose these 11 ghost-masters that they have to prosecute them quietly in the past six months or so?

    Finally, Hardball is freaked out to think that 50,000 ghosts infiltrated the federal payroll without the Ministry of Establishment knowing about them; without the Head of Service and Permanent Secretaries knowing about them.

    Is it that Nigeria is haunted by ghosts or garrisoned by ghouls? And with ghosts in possession of so much cash; a new flank may have opened in Nigeria’s fight for her soul don’t you think?

  • Of demons, villa ghosts and Nigerian paralysis

    SIR: Sadly, acknowledged bright minds are now waxing strong in superstitious theology and pseudo-spirituality. Society is guided by the philosophy it embraces. Because theology is the mother of all philosophy, every society will become what it theologizes!

    What ensnared the villa, and indeed the country itself, was corruption in all of its forms. Attributing metaphysical basis to our individual and collective irresponsibility is a shifty way of blaming everything on Satan!

    No be Satan’s fault. Na our fault! Forget Lucifer and his demons; corrupt leaders inflict more harm on a country than the beasts from Dante’s Inferno. Every money stolen whether by a president, governor, minister, legislator, civil servant, contractor or judge catapults the fleecing of the land to infernal magnitude.

    Let all thieves cough their loot. Roads will be built, environment will be cleaned, schools will be renovated, hospitals will be equipped, airports will be maintained and lives will be preserved.

    Mega million naira egunje are commonplace in government offices. Meanwhile, the elevators in the buildings that quarter those offices are not working. The clinics are not equipped, the electronics constantly fail. And those whose dereliction of duty inflicts such disrepair blame demons and principalities! Hogwash!

    Consider the fact that Islamic Qatar and Saudi Arabia are working as are Singapore and Pakistan. Christian England and USA are working as are Italy, France and other countries proffering Christianity. Israel has prospered with its Judaism. Hindu India is working. Atheist China and Russia are working. Bhuddist Japan is working. Multicultural Malaysia is working. Does God hate Nigeria so much that he puts half of the demons of the world to live there? Or might it be that the righteousness which exalts a nation is defined by ethical behaviour and moral rectitude rather than by theological malarkey?

    Our people, especially opinion moulders must wake up from this hocus-pocus super-naturalist worldview. You reap what you sow and sleep on the bed you lay.

    There was an Orisa edifice in Oregun in Ikeja that prevented the expansion of an important road. Contractors feared moving the edifice which had been erected as far back as anyone could remember. After Governor Bola Tinubu took office in 1999, I offered to help to negotiate with the chief priest of that Orisa to remove the edifice. I proffered that the law of eminent domain, operated worldwide, allows any government to displace private interest for the good of the larger public.

    Should the chief priest refuse to negotiate, I offered to kidnap the Orisa, burn it and dump its ashes in the Atlantic. I dared the Orisa to visit its wrath on me.  Governor Tinubu had a better idea. He and Julius Berger made a better offer to the chief priest. The Orisa and its chief priest relocated within a month. The road was renovated and expanded. It is now called Kudirat Abiola Way in Oregun, Ikeja.

    If there were ghosts disturbing them in Aso Villa, they should long have given others the key.  As a friend of mine asserted, he would have lived with all the ghosts and gotten the job done. We must accept no excuses. Anyone who cannot overcome the ghosts should leave the job alone; let’s get professional ghost-busters to run the country.

    Ghosts always bow to determined humans!

     

    • Sola Adeyeye

    Chief Whip, Senate.

    National Assembly, Abuja.

  • Ghosts without end

    Ghosts without end

    • It’s high time the officials spawning ghost workers are prosecuted

    Just as well that the finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, has said what should rightly be said about the discovery of another round of ghost workers in the country’s federal civil service. According to the minister, those behind the payment to the ghost workers – the banks and ministries’ officials – are to be prosecuted. This is good talk.

    But we have to wait until the matter is pursued to its logical conclusion before commending the action because this is not the first time we are hearing of the existence of ghost workers in the civil service, whether at the federal level or even in the states. As a matter of fact, it is not unlikely that there would be many ghost workers even in the local governments; the snag is we hardly look in that direction because we often think there is not much to steal at that level.

    Mrs Adeosun who made the latest disclosure on the ghost workers when she appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance to defend her ministry’s budget said the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System were instrumental to the discovery. “As we speak now, we have about 23,000 that we need to investigate; those whom either the BVN is linked to multiple payments or the name on the BVN account is not consistent with the name on our own payroll.

    “If we are able to get everybody onto the BVN platform, we will be able to save a considerable amount of personnel cost”, she said.

    It is inconceivable that any worker in the country’s public service would still be collecting salaries without having BVN despite the massive campaign for all account holders to key into the platform or have restrictions placed on some aspects of the accounts. Definitely, something is fishy here. We cannot rule out collusion between some banks’ staff and some senior Federal Government workers if workers without BVN are still receiving salaries.

    It is regrettable that the country keeps losing huge chunks of money to the so-called ghost workers. But we must not stop at the point of lamenting why the nation has become a fertile ground to breed ghost workers, we must ensure that those responsible for such economic adversity are properly identified and prosecuted. This is the missing link since we have been hearing revelations about ghost workers. As with many other crimes, those involved are hardly punished. After the initial noise about the discovery, and the subsequent threats of fire and brimstone, nothing is heard on the matter again until another round of revelations is made.

    The Muhammadu Buhari administration should have no room for that kind of corruption not just because the economy is in dire straits and we need to track every kobo belonging to the government, but because there should be zero tolerance for corruption. There is no amount of investment we may make on technology to check the crime, if this is not followed by the appropriate lessons and punishment, those involved would continue to grow fat at the expense of the state.

    Ordinarily, there should not be any serious cases of ghost workers, particularly in the Federal Civil Service after the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System by the former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Under her, about 46,821 ghost workers were identified in 215 of the federal ministries, departments and agencies, thus saving the government billions of naira.

    But alas! We have been proved wrong. We have now seen that no matter the technology deployed, we will still find ghost workers in our system. It seems we must stop deodorizing the issue simply by referring to the phenomenon as ‘ghost workers’ because this diminishes its toxicity. Ghosts cannot collect, let alone spend salaries. So, we must go after all those running the chain, from the bankers to their accomplices in the civil service, if we want an end to that type of corruption.