•Japa thieves and their collaborators must refund the entitlements they illegally collected

President Bola Tinubu’s intervention in the scandalous salary fraud in the Federal Civil Service was necessary. “During my recent visit to South Africa,” he said, “I kept abreast of the week’s activities and was particularly struck by the revelations shared by the Head of the Civil Service regarding employees who had relocated abroad while drawing salaries without formally resigning.”

Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF) Folasade Yemi-Esan, told journalists that the fraud was discovered following a verification exercise that required everybody on the nominal roll who was receiving salaries to appear physically. The objective of the exercise was to stop the salaries of those who had left the service without proper documentation but were still earning remuneration.

The physical headcount in the federal ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) exposed the fraud. “From what I saw, the number of people that have gone out of the country and are still earning salaries, is more in the parastatals than in the core ministries,” she said.

The question is not about where there was a greater number of such cases. The issue is that such fraud should not have been allowed to happen in the first place. This raises serious systemic questions, particularly about accounting operations in the MDAs.

Shockingly, she learnt that some of those benefiting from the fraud had rushed back to the country from the UK, with the intention of participating in the verification exercise. She said some of them were forced to resign when they could not participate in the exercise. It is immoral that those who had left the country for perceived greener pastures abroad wanted to continue receiving salaries from the civil service, and made fraudulent arrangements to make that happen. That is corruption.

There is also the disturbing possibility that there may be people who had left the civil service but were unaware that they were still on the payroll, and whose salaries were being received by fraudulent insiders.

It is unclear how long the discovered fraud had existed, and how many people were involved, directly or indirectly. But it was striking enough to attract the President’s attention. Obviously, it could not have existed without collusion between those who fraudulently received salaries they never worked for and those who were supposed to ensure that such payments did not occur.

The President’s position on the issue highlighted the circle of collusion. He said: “The culprits must be made to refund the money they have fraudulently collected. Their supervisors and department heads must also be punished for aiding and abetting the fraud.” Both consequences should send a strong signal that fraud is unacceptable.

This discovery of fraud in the middle of reforms under Yemi-Esan shows that there is a need for more reforms in the MDAs. She has been credited with reforms towards improving civil service welfare. She must also introduce urgent reforms to ensure the prevention of fraud. Apart from losing money by paying ghost workers, having them on the payroll blocks the employment of many Nigerians waiting to be employed.

It is commendable that the civil service leadership discovered this fraud. Considering the ongoing efforts to review the national minimum wage, the country would have had to pay the ghost workers based on the outcome of the review, thereby losing more money. It is bad enough that they also benefited from the N35,000 provisional wage award for all treasury-paid Federal Government workers, to improve the welfare of the workforce, pending the new minimum wage.

As the President said, the authorities “must ensure those responsible are held accountable and restitution is made.” It is equally important to institute reforms to prevent fraud in the civil service.

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