By Danladi Ndayebo

In the last few months, on several occasions, public attention has been drawn to the menace of corruption in the nation’s civil service, particularly the ghost worker syndrome and the threat which it poses to nation building and the process of justice and equity.

It hardly needs debating that the ghost worker syndrome cuts across all the states of the federation, with millions of naira siphoned from government coffers through salary payments to non-existing employees, who have fraudulently been listed on the payroll system. Some of these employees include retired civil servants, deceased people or pure fictitious names. One major cause is the erosion of checks and balances by successive administrations which has made transparent governance difficult.

It is regrettable but it is true that corrupt civil servants have over the years increased government expenditure through the placement of ghost workers on the payroll.

So for any responsible government, tackling the menace ought to be the starting point for strengthening the civil service which is the engine room of governments the world over. This is where the Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu’s intervention becomes not only desired but inevitable.

Niger state has commenced the process of capturing the biometric data of staff under its employment, with the purpose of eliminating ghost workers and ensuring prompt payment of salaries.

In the current effort at cleaning the mess in the state’s civil service, government has sought the assistance of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea to determine the exact number of civil servants in the state through its ICT biometric data system.

The state had in the past conducted a number of verifications and staff auditing to fish out ghost workers that have dominated its payroll but with little success, owing largely to the methods that were adopted. The good news however is that the new ICT data capturing system would enable the state to flush out the remaining ghost workers. Only 4,000 ghost workers were detected during the last exercise.

The move has become inevitable because of the heavy financial burden which payment of emolument of the bloated civil service places on the state. The state government requires about N 3. 4 billion to be able to pay its present workforce which currently stands at 32, 000. With a federal allocation of N 2.8 billion to the state and an additional 60,000 workers in the local government councils and primary schools, several billions of naira would be required for government to pay the new national salary scale.

It is troubling that a state that has set for itself the vision of being among the top three most developed economies in Nigeria by the year 2020 will be bugged down by the menace of ghost workers.

Interestingly, the ongoing staff audit has exposed the pervasive deficiency in record keeping by successive administrations in the state. It is painful that no one seemed to know how many workers the state actually has. If the previous administrations had scrupulously documented its personnel records; audited its books regularly, and updated them regularly, the embarrassing incidents of fraud such as the 4,000 ghost workers detected during the last exercise could have been forestalled.

The ongoing exercise is therefore in furtherance of Governor Aliyu’s declaration of zero tolerance for corruption. The state has promised to prosecute all those who conspired and collaborated to defraud the state.

Beyond enforcing the e-payment system, straightening out the payrolls and punishing culprits in the pay syndicate is the new resolve of the Ahmed Ibrahim Matane-led Civil Service.

Ndayebo is the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State.