“It is fraud galore. They know who is responsible for all those things. And we all know this money gets back to the big Ogas”
–Sunday Fagbemi commenting on the discovery of 8, 863 ghost workers in the Kwara State civil service, November 23, 2016.
The opening quote sourced from Mr. Sunday Fagbemi, factional Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party in Kwara State, typifies the outrage that greeted the discovery, recently, of almost 9,000 ghost workers who have been receiving salaries and emoluments from the state for several years. It should be noted that the figure of fictitious names smuggled into the state payroll is almost one-third of the entire workforce and that salaries had not been paid for several months.
These awkward facts open up a line of inquiry concerning whether the crunch in Kwara was brought about, in part by such moral howlers as falsifying the wage bill through the addition of names that do not exist. Bad as it is, the case of Kwara is not an isolated one, considering that in successive administrations at all levels of government, there has been an entrenched “Ghost Workers’ Problem.”
The PUNCH reported on Wednesday the statement by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mahmoud Isa-Dutse Mahmoud Dutse, that the monthly wage bill of the Federal Government had dropped by N20bn as a result of an audit. Before you enthuse about this development however, recall that the ubiquitous “ghost” workers syndrome is like the proverbial cat with nine lives. Three years ago, for example, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Minister of Finance, and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, informed the nation excitedly that as a result of the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System, across 215 Ministries, Departments and Agencies, government had fished out close to 47,000 “ghost” workers resulting in the saving of N119bn in the monthly wage bill. However, we now know that what was saved by the right hand was stolen by the left, to the extent that the “ghost” workers appear to have returned to the system with a vengeance.
To be sure, almost every state in Nigeria has had its share of the “ghost” workers and the attendant drain of resources. Sometimes, the figure of “ghost” workers is almost equal to the entire number of personnel on the payroll, and the practice goes on for several years without detection. Is this advanced level amnesia, or those who know turn a blind eye, or as Fagbemi informs, we are dealing with cases of programmed looting by those who ought to have taken firm action against the recurrent practice? This mirrors a painful paradox noted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo at Wednesday’s First Akintola Williams Annual Lecture in Lagos. According to Obasanjo, despite a plethora of institutions of accountability such as the Offices of the Accountant General and the Auditor General, Public Complaints Commission, Code of Conduct Bureau, Bureau for Public Procurement, Office of the Ombudsman, a lot of water passes under the bridge continually.
Obasanjo puts this down to the lack of compliance. But this explanation begs the question of why there is little or no compliance with accountability instruments outlined in the constitution. One possible answer is that no one or very few leaders have had the presence of mind, moral stamina and follow-through capacity to enforce the rules. In this respect, and sad to say, even the current anti-corruption regimen of the Buhari administration had been confined to a few sensational cases having to do with the campaign funds of the Peoples Democratic Party illegally sourced from money earmarked for buying arms, leaving untouched a wide gamut of corrupt practices under previous and current governments.
There is also the fact that politics and political offices have become, as Richard Joseph noted in a seminal book, the main vehicles of patronage as well as of private and communal appropriation. Hence, politicians with an eye on 2019 and without fulfilling the mandate of the current dispensation are busy foraging for funds with which to run capital intensive campaigns. There is also the fact that institutions of retribution and correction such as the judiciary either do not work or deliver justice on slow wheels.
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that these perfidies and systemic rot are peculiar to Nigeria. The triumph of neoliberalism and the predominance of market forces have come with a heavy price tag. So, Americans are lamenting the re-feudalisation of their institutions and the political decay in Washington. Elsewhere, in Europe and parts of Asia, corruption has become a major issue on the political agenda. What is distinct about the Nigerian condition is that in the absence of clear-headed solutions, moral purpose and a vigilant civil society serving as the conscience of the nation, the problem has gone from bad to worse.
It is in this context of moral paralysis featuring much talk but little decisive action as well as selective retribution, that the crisis of “ghost” workers has assumed its current monstrous dimension. There is, of course, the related issue of the civil service, once the glorious epicentre of governance projects declining to little more than outfits for collecting state handouts and benefits principally for work not done. It will be interesting to observe how much work, apart from the shuffling of files from one office to the other, actually gets done in civil services at national and sub national levels. Habits such as “Not on seat”, frequent absenteeism and idle gossips in pavements have for long characterised our bureaucracies. Admittedly, these drawbacks are compounded by infrastructure hiccups such as prolonged outages, during which workers stroll around in order to escape the sweltering heat. In an update of these tendencies, workers in a majority of the states stay away from work because wages are not paid but come back when announcement is made that salaries will be paid. In effect, workers, though slowly, are being paid usually in arrears for both work done and for time spent at home protesting delayed payment.
In the ridiculous instance of Cross River State, the idea of political appointments and special assistants has been stretched to include 1,106 special assistants, 28 commissioners, 65 special advisers among others. This has led to the creation of Special Assistants for Crayfish and various agricultural items as well as spare parts. Unsurprisingly, the civil service in this situation is little more than a revenue collecting institution with little thought for productivity or accountability. In other words, the “ghost” workers syndrome is part of a larger set of issues and disabling encumbrances, which reduce the machinery of government to little more than a consumptive pastime.
What is required is a rethinking of the entire apparatus of government as a first step towards retooling it for effective delivery. Money will continue to go down the drain for as long as we maintain civil services as the pliable instruments of a prebendal political elite which has converted the state into Chinua Achebe’s famous “Juicy Morsel”. Finally, the overstretched and under-resourced anti-corruption institutions must take up the task of prosecuting those found guilty of perpetuating “ghost” workers while the civil society should stand up to demand accountability from the custodians of state power.
Punch
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