According to Encyclopedia – Ghost is a legendary creature of the undead believed to exist in ‘America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania’. It is a legendary creature believed to exist almost globally. In traditional belief, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Ghosts are also generally described as solitary essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life.
However, if one decided to follow how closely associated Nigeria and ghosts are, one won’t only be shocked at the awareness ghosts are now known for when it comes to looking for job, writing application letters, attending interviews, and opening bank accounts into which their salaries will be paid while collecting their employment letters from the administration department but also at how they are absent at work all month and yet appeared in banks at the end of each month to withdraw their salary from their account and to ensure they add more weight before coming back at the end of next month to withdraw their salary as usual. As a student of nature, one is inquisitive to understand the environmental and societal challenges one contends with in order to create and ensure more friendly occurence that will favour growth and development. It was in this regard that citizens and some government officials alike have been rising up to fight against this issue of ghosts working population amidst us.
Moreover, it is believed that ghosts only exists to haunt particular locations, objects, and people. Well, with the module operandi of these ghosts, one wonders why they chose to seek Nigeria jobs only to collect the montly salary on the pretence of being a worker. Why did they not just enter bank vaults, invade CBN and take all the money they wished to be enriched with while they were alive. Or could this mean they were unemployed before they died and thus, became obsessed with job that they seek employment. This would have been correct if they do go to work but they don’t, and they can’t also be taking their monthly salary to the ghost community as Naira is not tenable there either as a currency or a form of exchange.
I realized that these ghost workers are neither from the underworld nor the world of ghosts but a creation of the Nigeria Civil Service system at the three tiers of government to pad up pay rolls of respective affected tier of government. Here are instances of uncovering such workers of their ghostly veil in each tier of government.
As at 2001, the incumbent Accountant General of the Federation, Chief Joseph Naiyeju, reported the discovery of 40,000 ghost workers following a man-power verification exercise conducted by the federal government.
In 2006, when Mallam Nasir El Rufai was Minister, of the Federal Capital Territory, 6000 ghost workers were detected after the completion of a staff audit, which also revealed that the FCT government was losing about $8m annually, due to ghost workers on its payroll.
Alhaji Mande Lofa, Chairman of Tureta LGA confirmed that a verification exercise carried out in July 2011 by the Tureta Local Government Area of Sokoto State led to the discovery of over 500 ghost workers. In December 2011, Garba Tagwai, the Niger State Commissioner for Local Government Affairs also noted that “No fewer than 20,000 ghost workers have been detected on the pay roll of the 25 Local Government Areas of Niger State”. In July 2011, Edo State Governor, Governor Oshiomhonle also revealed that, prior to the advent of his administration, “the State had to contend with the phenomena of ghost workers and ghost pensioners in addition to other abuses of the payroll system”. Also, in July 2011, the Rivers State Universal Basic Education Board reported losses of N2.4bn annually to 1477 ghost workers, while the National Identity Management Commission, in the same month, also revealed that, after conducting a biometric data exercise, it had uncovered 4000 ghost workers out of about 10,300 employees on its payroll. The Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has also lamented the realization that, prior to his administration, the Ekiti State government loses over N3bn annually to ghost workers out of a projected annual budget of N80bn.
In May 2009, the House of Representative Committees on Customs and Excise also discovered that about 50% of the 20,000 workforce in the Nigeria Customs Service were ghost workers. Former Finance Minister, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, in July 2011, reported that the federal government had removed a total of 43,000 ghost workers from the old payroll of 112,000 employees in several MDAs, between 2010 and 2011, through the implementation of the IPPIS. The Chairman of the Nigeria Pension Reform Task team, Ahaji Abdulrasheed Maina also disclosed in February 2012, that on completion of a successful nationwide biometric verification of pensioners, his team detected 71,133 fake pensioners. In June 2013, the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said “215 MDAs (153,019 staff) are on the IPPIS (Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System) as of January 2013. Savings on payroll cost to date is N118.9bn and work is ongoing to bring in other 321 MDAs not yet on the IPPIS. About 46,821 ghost workers have also been identified.”
However, it is unforunate that nobody has been held responsible for these traditional scams and frauds uncovered in our civil service despite the documented evidence made available most especially by the attached bank accounts to these ghost workers while the money saved from uncovering such ghost workers has not contributed to the general wellbeing of the people nor has it contributed to national growth and development.
As if the war against ghosts as workers is not enough, recent press release suggested that the Niger Delta Amnesty programme might be making buisness looks good for some individuals as ghost militant fighters were the ones that were disarmed. It seems our war against ghosts is just getting started with the recent claims the press release of the supposed amnesty-embraced Niger Delta most notable militant group known as Movement of the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND). Out of all the claims by MEND which includes ‘the passing of vote of no-confidence on the so-called National Dialogue the presidency is brewing to keep the status quo which has been unfair to the average Nigerian’, is the claim that Nigerians had been hoodwinked into “believing that over 30,000 men and women in the Niger Delta, now requiring an annual training/rehabilitation budget of over 30Billion Naira, took up arms” and that “how can the government correlate its display of less than three thousand weapons (most of which were donated by the military for the disarmament show), with more than thirty thousand (30,000) so-called repentant militants. Were the rest fighting with sticks?” when it was addressing Mr Tony Uranta on his repeated campaign that MEND seized to exist after the said Niger Delta Amnesty fraud. One is left to assume that if the rest of the repentant militant are not carrying sticks then they must be carrying ghostly guns which consequently made them ghost militant fighters and these ghost militant fighters created by the presidency are the ones expending ninety percent of the yearly thirty (30) billion naira allocation.
If these claims are correct which I belief are correct even though I doubt the authenticity of the continued existence of MEND because of their newly found culture of non-violence, but one can not over-rule the money approach Nigeria government is known for by throwing money at every problem the Nigeria state is facing and this kindly underscore our failure to arrest the Boko Haram menace since Boko Haram has refused to embrace amnesty and its leadership has rejected the oppourtunity of self enrichment. These claims explains the source of the enrichment of people like “Tompolo and Asari Dokubo” who now own private jet and university respectively, at least that is what was reported. If these claims are not correct, how are we going to justify the uttercations of Asari Dokubo on Channels TV if there is no MEND (and/or other militant groups) existing structure to execute those threats or is President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan now giving our military structure away to rogues and criminals like Asari Dokubo? Also, one can not rule out the possibilty of GEJ led Nigeria government to buy over the leadership of the militants group in Niger Delta while leaving out the structure as he has proven he is capable of that, repeatedly. Also, this can not be unassociated with the increasing oil-theft in the Niger Delta region. It might be possible that as Nigeria rehabilitates and train ghost militant fighters, the real militant fighters are stealing our oil in the Niger Delta region abandoning violence for economic gains. With these developments and the attitude of the President towards national issues and concerns, one is forced to consider the probability of having a ‘Ghost President’ except that this time around, the ghost comes to work and address Nigerians foolishly. Nigerians will be here when the ghostly veil of these ghost militant fighters will be uncovered even if it is a thousand years from now.
The writer is on Twitter as @Aabiolat
