Nigeria’s Ghost-workers Crisis: SSNA-USA Urges Pres. Buhari to Exercise Moral Leadership
The South-South Native Assembly-USA calls on President Muhammadu Buhari, the nation’s governors, state and national assemblies, to exercise moral leadership on the country’s protracted ghost-worker crisis thereby mitigating the ongoing sufferings of folks and families across the nation.
This clarion call becomes imperatively instructive in light of thecolossal devastating effects in the nation’s workforce of the prevailing criminal and corruptible practice of garnishing and flooding payrolls with non-existing, nonworking, or fake persons or names for defrauding purposes (commonly referred to as Ghost-worker Syndrome) by a bunch of the nation’s traditional political elites and administrators. According to feelers in public domain, the annual growth and population of Ghost-workers in the nation’s civil service (local, state, and federal levels) and in most public entities and institutions in Nigeria might outstrip the nation’s “living” and active workforce. Also, among other factors, the underlying criminal scheme is severely implicated in most state governments’inability to meet their most basic obligations to their employees, especially paying their “real” workers on a month- to-month basis. Evidently, the salaries and remunerations of ghost-employees are not just more than that of the active working classbut are prioritized over that of the real employees and civil servants by most corrupt politicians and administrators across the nation. Thus by the time available funds are employed in paying the surging ghost-workforce very little are left to pay the ever shrinking real and active workforce, or to commit to developmental endeavors.
Critically, in the face of the prolonged blight of deprivation, hunger, and ravaging poverty that has descended on the nation, clearly engineered by the absence of a national economic planning and agenda for advanced socioeconomic developmentover the years, coupled with protracted politics of plunder, it’sconceivable that concerted efforts are marshalled against the scourges of corruptible and criminal practices including the underlying ghost-worker syndrome. It’s against the backdrop of the underlying development, coupled with the apparent lack of clarity with respect to the public policy direction of successive administrations on the issues of economic planning and robust national agenda for advanced socioeconomic development in the motherland that SSNA-USA remains committed to surging andraising the banner of a new vision and public engagement and interest in the Nigeria’s political process, locally and internationally. Again, we call on President Muhammadu Buharito also exercise moral leadership on legislative action on a national agenda for advanced socioeconomic development. This could be preceded by a Presidential Commission on Advanced socioeconomic development and Planning- comprises Nigerians of all walks of life, home and abroad. The time has come for concerted efforts to create more and expand the piles as opposed to fighting over existing pile (the so-called national cake) thereby expanding opportunities to all Nigerians. Nigeria’s political leadership should be made aware of the fact that the Nigerian nation-state retains a huge and surging population, as such economic development must keep pace with population explosion-trends to enhance national security, national unity, and reduction of social tension. Thus, we reiterate our call for an end of the nation’s traditional politics of plunder. Nonetheless, while we applaud the ongoing biometric-based and active employment verification exercises and efforts by some state governments (including Rivers State) designed to confront this ghost-worker menace that has blossomed into a huge crisis of unimaginable proportion, we must not hesitate in stating our vehement opposition against attempts at mass retrenchment of real and active workers and civil servants.
SSNA-USA believes it’s about time the nation’s political leadership clean-up the mess they’ve created. Thus instead of compounding the sufferings of working and struggling folks and families by disengaging them from their very means of livelihoods, concerted efforts should be tailored toward effective civil service reform that tackles headlong the ongoing ghost-worker crisis and addresses the issues of living wage. In other words, serious efforts should be focused on eliminating all ghost-workers from both federal and states’ payrolls.
Thus, we urge the nation’s political leadership including President Buhari and the nation’s governors to publicly and consistently deplore and persuade fellow Nigerians to relinquish this inordinate evil practice at public thievery besides actively calling for and supporting legislative actions designed to further criminalize this brazen act of public robbery.
Signed:
Felix Gumnwee – President
South-South Native Assembly-USA is a US-based sociocultural forum/organization of the Nigeria’s south-south peoples. We are committed to promoting the rights and welfare (including pushing the regional issues) of the peoples of the south-south geopolitical zone (comprising Rivers State, BayelsaState, Cross River State, Akwa Ibom State, Edo State, and Delta State) in the United States of America, Nigeria, and beyond.