Who are the ghost workers? It is time to confront the criminals and bring them to justice

The issue of ‘ghost workers’ in the civil service has remained a recurring decimal under successive administrations, military and civilian. The spectre, which ought to be an aberration in any proper self-accounting and self-auditing bureaucratic system, is now a national scourge that appears insurmountable. In the past two decades, almost every worker’s verification exercise carried out by agencies of government has thrown up thousands of fake workers who are on the payroll. Despite that these ghost workers had been receiving regular salaries and allowances running into billions of Naira, questions persist as to why they are still in business.

More than seven years in the life of the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the nation is still being regaled with tales of ghost workers being uncovered and various sums ‘saved’, despite the full deployment of technological tools to forestall the problem. In June this year, the Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dasuki Arabi disclosed that 70,000 ghost workers had been ‘eliminated’ from the federal government payroll through the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS). According to him, with their removal from the payroll, and hitherto alleged wrong management of the IPPIS, the federal government had been able to save N220 billion. A few days ago, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno also claimed that the federal government had uncovered about 54,000 fraudulent payroll entries in IPPIS.

The figures dished out by Arabi and Monguno provide a simple explanation that between June 24 and September 10 this year, 70,000 ghost workers were ‘eliminated’ from the payroll and another 54,000 were added in less than three months. Yet, the introduction of the IPPIS in the nation’s Public Finance Management (PFM) system was largely designed to insulate the government payroll from the ghost workers syndrome. Therefore, unless the federal government adopts a structured and serious institutional response to the ever-recurring problem of ghost workers in most government establishments, the syndicate that thrives on inflating the actual number of workers and fleecing the nation will keep smiling to the banks.

The issue here is not discovering ghost workers as the regular announcements have become rather boring. What Nigerians would like to know are the steps being taken to deal with confirmed cases and prevent new ones. We ought to know, for instance, how and when some of these “ghost” names got on the payroll and for how long they have been there. For now, there is no sign that anything is being done to stop the fraud. The security agencies should also tell Nigerians into what accounts the monies so fraudulently drawn have been paid over the years; and the total sum the nation has lost so far to this organised crime.

In 2011, Olusegun Aganga, the then finance minister revealed that the federal government had removed 43,000 ghost workers from its payroll. Two years later, the then Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala revealed that the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) had that year culminated in the uncovering of 46,821 ghost workers and saved the nation N118.9 billion. We must seriously interrogate why it is so easy for the perpetrators of the crime to do what they do effortlessly and yet are not caught. Transparency and accountability remain essential to tackling the problem.

It is unacceptable that Nigerians should be periodically regaled with tales of discovery of ghost workers, while no visible attempts are made to get to the bottom of such fraud and bring the wrath of the law to bear on its perpetrators. This mindless plunder of scarce state resources has lasted long enough. It must be stopped forthwith. Since this blatant fraud emanates from the manipulation of payroll technology, the solution in plugging such pilfering will require blocking prospective technological loopholes. Nigerians are tired of reports of how many ghost workers that have been uncovered and how much has been saved therefrom. We want a closure to these channels through which humongous public funds are stolen. Above all, it is time the perpetrators were unmasked and punished.

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