Public service and recurring ghost workers’ syndrome

[Mirror]

That 45,000 ghost workers were exorcised from Federal Government's payroll often padded by desperate crooks to line their pockets should ordinarily be flattering news. But dubious incomes accumulated through faceless names or the non-stoppage of retired or dead workers' salaries by FG's criminally- minded pay officers has remained a recurring decimal. It is only exposed when it pleases the authorities to do so. Therefore, it is off the mark as an interesting piece of news. The latest payroll fraud was reportedly detected through the deployment of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), a new information technology the FG embraced for the purpose of curbing salaries and wages corruption in the federal public service. The IPPIS is one of the World Bank-engineered public sector reform programme in Nigeria coordinated by the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR).

According to the BPSR, the IPPIS project, a World Bank–assisted programme of the FG's Economic Reforms and Governance Project (ERGP), was instituted in 2007 to provide a reliable and comprehensive database for the public service, facilitate manpower planning, eliminate record and payroll frauds, facilitate easy storage, update and retrieve personnel records for administrative and pension processes and facilitate staff remuneration payment with minimal waste and leakages.

Since the commencement of this project, successes recorded include the streamlining of payroll and personnel processes; personnel budget now based on actual as against estimate projections; prompt deduction and remittance of money to all third party funds, such as the Pension Fund Administration, National Health Insurance Scheme etc., as well as saving funds recovered from the ghost worker syndrome dogging the nation's public service. The FG, according to reports, made a savings of N4.4 billion in the 2007/2008 fiscal year from the IPPIS project, for example. The said amount represents the difference between the budgeted personnel cost estimates of just seven ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and the actual personnel costs paid during the period under reference.

An insight into the horrendous nature of the fraud indicates that the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) harbours about 10,000 ghost workers on its payroll, while the prostrate Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) fritters away N2 billion annually using ghost workers as cover.

The monumental ghost-worker sleaze bug is also eating the fabrics of the civil service of virtually all states in the country. It is documented that Ekiti State loses N63 million monthly to the fraud, while the figure for Zamfara State is N2 billion annually. In Kebbi State, the loss amounts to N153 million monthly; Bayelsa State N3.5 billion annually; and Kogi State N700 million per month. A report last year said Lagos State, believed to be ahead of other states in tackling the fraud, recovered N250 million through its innovative Oracle payment system.

The adoption of information technology innovations like the IPPIS at the FG level, Oracle in Lagos State and the biometric system by some states, seems to have become inevitable with the oozing penchant of incorrigibly prodigal public pay officers, their cohorts and sponsors to loot government coffers dry. But quite distressing is the fact that with the recurring incidents of ghost workers in all the tiers of government, no official has been exposed as culpable or penalized for the fraudulent act, to public knowledge. It is an uphill task convincing the public that the perpetrators of the economic crime are spirits, and cannot be fished out and made to face the wrath of the law, if the government so desires.

On the IPPIS and related projects, however, our worry is that no system is entirely perfect. This is against the backdrop that some 'smart' managers of the system may compromise and twist the technology for selfish pecuniary gains. This possibility thus presents the need for the various governments to put in place very robust and stern measures to deter and punish in-house sabotage once detected, on the one hand; and the mounting of regular anti-corruption campaigns to discourage the ghost-worker syndrome countrywide, on the other. In addition, the government at all levels should give serious thought to how best to address the outrageous discrepancies between the incomes of political office holders and those of public servants who perpetrate ghostworker frauds. While the poor pay of public servants and their scarcely secured future cannot serve as licence for them to steal, they might have contributed to sustaining the fraud.

National Mirror