ADDRESSING THE MENACE OF GHOST WORKERS IN YAHAYA BELLO's WAY

The menace of ghost workers has taken a dangerous dimension in Kogi state over the years. Today in the state; there exist ghost workers and ghost ministries, ghost schools and ghost staff, ghost contractors and ghost contracts, ghost pensioners and retirees all of which continue to drain the state's coffers thereby renders it incapable of carrying out its basic responsibility of providing infrastructure, maintenance of law and order and so on.

No doubt the astronomical unemployment rate in Kogi state and In the country today is in part exacerbated by the widespread incidence of ghost employees in both State and Local governments’ administration. As a direct consequence of this fraud, qualified kogites and Nigerians often find it difficult to get a space in both government and private establishments whose nominal rolls are brimming with fictitious characters but who nonetheless monthly cream out humongous pay checks from their victim establishment.

According to the May/June 2001 edition of the Fraud Magazine, “a ghost employee is simply someone on the payroll who doesn’t actually work for the victim company. Through the falsification of personnel or payroll records a fraudster causes pay checks to be generated to a ghost.” It added that a ghost employee may be a fictitious person or a real individual who simply doesn’t work for the victim employer. “When the ghost is a real person, it’s often a friend or a relative of the perpetrator. “In order for a ghost employee scheme to work,” it said, “four things must happen: The ghost must be added to the payroll, timekeeping and wage rate information must be collected, a pay check must be issued to the ghost, and the check must be delivered to the perpetrator or an accomplice.”

Even though this fraudulent system has been embraced and maintained by highly placed civil servants in state and for ages now, it is lamentable that no deterrence has been applied to cleans the system in the past. For the perpetrators who annually cream off millions of naira from government coffers into their private pockets for work not done, the immoral and ungodly business continues to expand its cancerous territory. It had become so pervasive that it convulsed the entire bureaucracy in the state and country. All past attempts at curtailing the gorgon-medusa in Kogi state apparently failed as the perpetrators and their accomplice became more sophisticated and seemed always a step ahead of those charged with weeding them out.

  In kogi state when the past administration of Capt Wada attempted to sanitize the state civil service, the engineers of ghost workers who are also civil servants muscled their ill-gotten wealth, instigated the organized Labour against the good intention of the government, accusing it of attempting to sack civil servants. Various forces were used and the exercise was scuttled.

For Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, ghost worker syndrome constitute one of the drain pipes of public funds in the state. The governor said in Okene, headquarters of the Kogi Central Senatorial District, that the role of some officials of the state civil service, who he said are constituting a cog in the wheel of progress of the state. The governor revealed that the screening exercise conducted by a committee set up for that purpose had uncovered how a single person included “as many as 300 ghost workers in the payroll of a local government” at the detriment of development of the council area.
And as the screening exercise continues, more staggering revelations are coming out on daily basis. So far, 946 ghost schools with over 6,000 staff have been uncovered while at the local government and state levels, thousands of ghost workers have been so far uncovered. The only way the welfare of the genuine workers can be improved and jobs created is to ensure the state is free of ghost workers, therefore, Gov Yahaya BELLO's spirit in exorcising the ghost workers from Kogi state must be commended. The governor is carrying out this exercise without fear or Favour, devoid of ethnic and religious sentiments; attribute that was lacking in the past.

While I encourage both the federal, state and local government administrations to continue to evolve cutting edge technological solution to prevent the ghost worker menace, the relevant anti-corruption and security agencies must of necessity ensure that human agents responsible for the financial haemorrhage and sabotage are named, shamed and prosecuted to serve as a stopper for all such brazen acts of thievery and squandermania.

Sanitizing the civil service system in Gov Yahaya Bello's way means the state will save money for development which will have impact on the lives of the people.

-Onogwu Isah Muhammed write from
Lokoja.